The healthcare industry in the U.S. is a complex and multifaceted industry, with various challenges and opportunities. It is a highly-regulated system that includes a range of providers, facilities, and payers. A high degree of fragmentation and specialization and a complex mix of public and private financing make it unique when it comes to designing and administering education benefits for the industry. While the industry continues to grow and innovate, it is faced with ongoing external challenges such as rising healthcare costs, access to care, and an aging population. Added to that were the challenges it faced during the pandemic, leading to changes in how care is delivered and accelerating trends such as telehealth. However, the full impact of the pandemic on the industry is still evolving as we speak.

Further, attrition is a common challenge faced by healthcare organizations, more than any other industry, due to factors such as high workload, burnout, low job satisfaction, and competition for skilled workers. With this rapid pace of change in healthcare, upskilling is crucial for maintaining high-quality care and ensuring that healthcare professionals can adapt to new challenges and opportunities. That’s where education benefits come in as a strategic option in the HR toolkit.

Benefits of Upskilling for Healthcare Professionals

Out of the myriad benefits of Upskilling for healthcare professionals the most important ones include keeping up with new technologies, best practices, and changing patient needs along with maintaining licensure and certification as required in many healthcare professions. Upskilling can also lead to improved patient outcomes, increased job satisfaction, and better career prospects.

It’s a known fact that high attrition has a negative impact on the quality of patient care and increases recruitment and training costs. Some of the strategies to reduce attrition may include improving working conditions, providing opportunities for professional development, and offering competitive compensation and benefits. Education benefits are a part of the enhanced benefits provided to healthcare professionals.

Education assistance programs can benefit the healthcare industry in several ways:

1. Attracting and retaining talent: By offering education assistance programs, healthcare employers can attract and retain highly skilled and motivated employees who are interested in advancing their careers.
2. Increasing skill levels: Education assistance programs can help healthcare workers acquire new skills and knowledge that they can apply in their jobs, which can lead to better patient outcomes and improved quality of care.
3. Addressing skills shortages: In healthcare, there are often shortages of workers in critical roles or specialties. Education assistance programs can help address these shortages by providing the necessary training to current workers or by encouraging more people to enter the field.
4. Demonstrating commitment to employee development: Healthcare employers that invest in their employees’ education and development can demonstrate a commitment to their workforce and create a culture of learning and growth. This can lead to increased job satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty among employees.

Overall, education assistance programs can help healthcare employers build a more skilled, motivated, and engaged workforce, which can ultimately lead to better patient outcomes and improved quality of care.

Healthcare is a niche for Edcor

Healthcare is a niche for Edcor; with over 40 years of experience and about 40% of our Clients coming from the healthcare services, hospitals, and pharmaceutical space we can confidently say that we know the industry better than any of the other third-party education benefits providers. Edcor not only works with healthcare employers to design customized education benefits programs that align with their business goals and employee needs, but also acts as a counsel and trusted advisor to help them tide challenges.

The most popular education benefits for the healthcare sector include:

1. Tuition Assistance: Most healthcare employers offer tuition assistance or reimbursement programs to help their employees pay for their education. This not only helps them upskill their existing workforce, engage, and retain them but also helps them build an internal talent pipeline for future leadership roles.
2. Scholarships: The Scholarship dollars can be awarded to dependents, current employees, or prospective hires/students pursuing healthcare degrees or certifications. This benefit helps reduce the ticket price of the degrees and is a great way to show that you care because there are no payback clauses attached to them.
3. Student Loan Assistance: Many healthcare employers offer Student Loan Assistance for healthcare workers. These are usually monthly cash payouts to the loan provider over and above the minimum contributions from the employee. This helps take off years in repayment and saves interest dollars for the employee. There is usually a lifetime cap on the dollars provided.
4. Academic Advising: Academic Advising targets the core elements of a learner’s success: right from choosing a suitable school, credits building, credits transfers, setting academic goals based on career interests, and developing an academic plan, to staying on track to achieve those academic goals. The significance of Academic Advising is compounded for working adult learners who don’t have the bandwidth to navigate through heaps of information while balancing the act between their personal and professional lives. This is a complementary service at Edcor.

The Edcor School Network has a portfolio of schools that are specialized in program offerings for the healthcare industry. Some of these schools are also open to having healthcare clients as clinical sites for their nursing students and thereby assist in building a recruitment pipeline.

Edcor can help research and compare the different education assistance programs available to find the best fit for your needs and goals.

Here’s what you can do:

As an HR team member of a healthcare provider, if you are wondering how you can further strategize your education benefits, here’s what you can do.

1. Review your education benefits policy to evaluate what you offer and when, and link it with your retention strategy. For Example,

• are these benefits available for Part-Time or Full-Time employees or both, and
• are they available on Hire or after a certain period of employment

2. You may want to increase the annual benefit limit/cap to say $10,000 for hard-to-recruit/retain employees with high-demand majors and degrees for particular job titles. For example, offer a higher cap for an RN or Medical Services Manager since those are valuable positions involving high recruitment and training costs.
3. Evaluate what percentage of your diverse workforce is utilizing these benefits. Higher degrees will result in better career and financial opportunities in the long term for them. Plan an outreach if there’s low utilization to highlight the DE&I culture you intend to build.
4. Partner with the Edcor School Network colleges near you where their students can use your facilities as clinical sites and help you build a recruitment pipeline.
5. Determine if your Educational benefits tie in with your organization’s L&D goals,

• Define Upskilling and what it entails in the next five years
• Outline sustainable career paths and high-demand skills
• Include short-term upskilling courses like Certificates and Certifications under the Tuition Policy
• You may reach out to Edcor for advice on these.

By offering educational benefits, healthcare employers can attract and retain high-quality employees, reduce turnover, and improve the quality of patient care. Edcor can assist in managing tuition assistance programs, offering discounts on education and training programs, and providing employees with resources to explore different career paths within the healthcare industry. Ultimately, this can help healthcare organizations improve employee satisfaction, reduce costs associated with turnover and recruitment, and enhance the quality of care provided to patients.

Let’s future together!

 Sara VanWagoner, VP of Corporate Growth, Edcor

Edcor is a woman-owned business and is the benchmark in education benefits administration. For 40+ years, our customized service and solutions have allowed Fortune 500 Healthcare Clients to use education benefits programs for employee recruiting, retention, and development. Please feel free to reach out to us!