Article of courtesy of the Bristol Herald Courier
ABINGDON, Va. — A new alliance is bringing together schools, health care firms and providers to promote workforce development in the health care sector.
Branded the Southwest Virginia Health Careers and Workforce Partnership, organizers held their second meeting Tuesday, focusing on the programs of area public schools, community colleges and universities. About 50 people attended the
event at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center.
The partnership is being coordinated by Karen Brown of the higher education center and involves Ballad Health, regional community colleges and four-year institutions, public school systems, the New River/Mount Rogers Workforce
Development Board and Southwest Region Workforce Development Board.
“We are trying to build a collaboration and strategic alignment to create a health workforce pipeline that meets the demand of our region,” Brown told the Bristol Herald Courier. “We have a unique region and the demands are high. We want to make sure we have enough health care workers to fill the needs to have effective health care in our region.”
The partnership is designed to serve the cities of Bristol, Galax and Norton and the counties of Bland, Buchanan, Carroll, Dickenson, Grayson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, Wise and Wythe.
One of the goals is to fill gaps in existing training opportunities, she said.
“Making sure our education partners are meeting the needs of our employers, what is projected for shortages in the future, what academic gaps or skill gaps are aligned with that training,” Brown said. “We do have some programs in our region but that’s not all the health care jobs that are out there. … Right now it’s short. Right now, all the programs we have and everything they’re doing — the numbers they’re turning out each year, there will still be a gap of needs projected for the
future.”
According to a 2023 study for the Virginia Health Workforce Development Authority, 102 of Virginia’s 133 localities are federally designated “Health Professional Shortage Areas” and 93 localities are “Mental Healthcare Professional Shortage Areas,” meaning about 30% of Virginians live in a community without a sufficient number of primary and behavioral healthcare providers.
Every county in far Southwest Virginia is designated a health professional shortage area and extending eastward with the exception of Pulaski, Montgomery and Roanoke counties, according to Rural Health Information Hub. Southwest Virginia needs over 860 nurses; nearly 300 licensed practical nurses and licensed vocational nurses; nearly 400 social and human service assistants; over 200 physical therapists and over mental health and substance abuse social workers, according to a 2024 survey by the George Mason University Center for Health Workforce.
Southwest Virginia also needs over 130 postsecondary health specialties teachers to train and educate the next generation of healthcare and life sciences workers, according to that survey.
The problem is statewide.
That same study showed Virginia, as a whole, needs more than 17,500 registered nurses, over 3,000 LPN and vocational nurses, over 2,700 nursing assistants, 3,700 physical therapists, over 9,000 social and human services assistants and
thousands more to fill other health support roles.
Tuesday’s panels included speakers from Mountain Empire, Southwest Virginia, Virginia Highlands and Wytheville community colleges; Appalachian College of Pharmacy, Bluefield, Emory & Henry, King, and Uva Wise; plus leaders from area public school divisions.
Adam Hutchison, president of Virginia Highlands Community College, said health care education has been part of Highlands since it opened in 1967 but has changed significantly.
“The way we train nurses or emergency medical technicians or the whole scope of health care. We’ve added technology, we do more simulation that provides a greater diversity of experiences. We can simulate something they may not get to see everyday in the hospital,” he said. “It’s also changed for the kind of recordkeeping that we use. We have medical coding and record-keeping programs that really just reflect the modern needs of technology.”
About 600 VHCC students are enrolled in some health care training field.
“Our largest program is registered nurse. We have 160 active registered nursing students already accepted in the program. Last year we graduated 85 RNs,” Hutchison said. “Among our collective community colleges we’ll graduate almost 200 nurses each spring but the need is even greater than that. We talk to our employers, like Ballad, and they just need more nurses than we can possibly provide.”
Growing a program requires more financial resources, more faculty and more space.
Hutchison said a State Council on Higher Education in Virginia report showed about 80% of health care workers in Southwest Virginia either studied or graduated from a community college.
“They may start at a school like Virginia Highlands and then transfer on to Radford or Virginia Tech and on to medical school,” Hutchison said. “We’re proud, generally, that community college students come back home and work in our region…We’re not exporting students. We’re training those to stay here, live here and take care of our families.”
Brown expects the new partnership can help solve some of this region’s shortage.
“I think it’s more than just filling jobs. We are trying to fill jobs but we’re also trying to make sure that our students are supported, we have a strong health care
system and overall support for the region,” she said, adding one of the challenges is nurses have so many different work opportunities, other than serving bedside at hospitals.
“What can we do, between the training side and the employer side, to retain the people we are training for these roles?”