One of the best ways to increase market share is to do a better job training frontline caregivers. That’s what David Kohnstamm, Administrator of the Rose Schnitzer Manor assisted living facility in Portland, Oregon, and his colleagues figured out.

"At the time all we had is shadowing. We would hire somebody and we would have them shadow another employee. There was very little formal training and bad habits got passed down. It was hard to hold people accountable. If you have a team that doesn't have the tools to do its job, it's scary because you're trusted with people's lives--people's grandparents and parents--if they're left on the floor or not responded to properly after an incident or documentation is not appropriate, there are all sorts of bad things that can happen."

As president of Good Samaritan, a 317-bed adult care community teaching hospital based in Baltimore, MD, Larry Beck faced a dual challenge familiar to many hospital administrators: high turnover and vacancy rates among crucial frontline workers, and an inadequate pipeline of skilled applicants for these essential positions. The national health care workforce shortage is an issue that keeps many a hospital administrator up at night, threatening to reach cataclysmic proportions in the coming decades.

In a recent op-ed appearing in The Herald News in Fall River, MA, Nancy Paull, CEO of Stanley Street Treatment and Resources in Fall River, describes how implementing a work-based learning program in partnership with the local community college created positive outcomes for the organization, patients and employees. SSTAR is one of the employers participating in the Jobs to Careers program.