LAKE VILLAGE -- Just before the coronavirus pandemic brought national attention to the health workforce shortages facing much of the nation, Arkansas Rural Health Partnership (ARHP) members unanimously decided to focus efforts on growing a local health workforce.
The need is critical due to significant shortages in nearly every health profession, including nursing, medicine, allied health, emergency medical services, community health workers, administration, coding and billing.
Mellie Bridewell Boagni, ARHP founder, president and chief executive officer, said, “In rural Arkansas, we have to be strategic in how we recruit and retain the health workforce. We realized the only real way to get ahead of this seemingly never-ending curve was to grow our own local health workforce. We needed a two-prong approach, one that reached younger kids before they decided on a career and also supported individuals already within the healthcare field.
“We had to be innovative and design initiatives that addressed practical needs in our communities, including gaps in knowledge related to health careers, college readiness, transportation, distance to training, cost of education, and training modalities. In the process, we have launched scholarship programs, a new training academy for community health workers, a health workforce mobile unit, a health careers website, and more. The opportunities for partnership and innovation are truly endless. It is thrilling to see rural Arkansas create models that are reaching rural communities across the state and country.”
The latest ARHP health workforce initiative to be funded in late March 2024 ($450,000, Delta Regional Authority) supports the training of emergency medical service (EMS) staff at various career stages.
“In reaching out to local EMS agencies, we discovered that there was a huge lack of EMS staff across the Southeast Arkansas Delta. In fact, EMS agencies were short nearly 200 emergency medical technicians (EMT) and paramedics for the region. Perhaps just as troubling, there were few EMS training programs in Arkansas with decreasing enrollment,” Boagni explained.
Due to crippling financial burdens, more rural hospitals (critical access hospitals with 25 beds or less) are currently facing the very difficult decision to close their doors or shift to the new rural emergency hospital (REH) designation, which eliminates inpatient care. This move will shift the rural burden of care to EMS providers and could have far reaching consequences to the health and wellness of rural residents, outward migration, and local economies.
In order to decrease the potential impact of these changes and bolster support in partnering EMS agencies, ARHP has pursued funding to support the EMS workforce pipeline.
New Delta Regional Authority (DRA) funds will support the Arkansas Delta Advance: Emergency Medical Services Training Initiative. The two-year program will offer entry-level training opportunities (EMT) and more advanced training (paramedic and community paramedic) to meet a range of student and workforce needs in the region. Efforts will provide one-on-one and financial support (i.e. tuition, books, fees, supplies) to twenty-six rural residents desiring to pursue and/or advance in an EMS career with demonstrated financial barriers to training. The project partners with two of the largest EMS providers in the region (Pafford Medical Services & ProMed Ambulance), ARHP hospital and federally qualified health center members (18), and the Southeast Arkansas Development District.
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