Reprinted with the permission of  The Daily Record.
Originally published March 27, 2006, By Karen Buckelew.

The Baltimore Alliance for Careers in Healthcare (BACH), a nonprofit work force development consortium that includes seven local hospitals (The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Maryland General Hospital, Mercy Medical Center, Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, St. Agnes Hospital, Union Memorial Hospital, and University of Maryland Medical Center), has chosen an institution with which to partner in its effort to train unemployed workers for health industry jobs.

The alliance is partnering with the Maryland Center for Arts and Technology, a North Howard Street training center already geared toward serving Baltimore’s unemployed or underemployed, to launch a 12-week bridge program which began April 10, 2006.

The bridge program is intended to enhance the basic skills of workers with low level reading and math abilities, helping them bridge the gap to new careers. In turn, the hospitals hopefully will get more skilled workers for their hard-to-fill positions.

The training program is currently serving 10 students in its pilot run. "This is a prototype," said Ron Hearn, Executive Director of BACH, "to take a look at best practices, develop a model and see if it works. And, if it doesn't work, to make adjustments to it as necessary."

The training program is costing the alliance more than $300,000, according to officials, but another $250,000 is needed to provide students with necessities like child care and transportation.

The alliance has been funded about $950,000 in grant money to support projects including the Pre-Allied Health Bridge Program at the Maryland Center for Arts and Technology as well as career counseling programs at five local hospitals.

The hospitals split 50-50 with the alliance the cost of the career counselors, intended to steer their existing entry-level workers into health industry positions with high vacancy rates.

The alliance focuses on seven positions in which the hospitals have reported the most openings: certified nursing assistants, radiology technicians, surgery technicians, medical laboratory technicians, pharmacy technicians, nurse extenders and respiratory therapists.

Classes at the Maryland Center for Arts and Technology are just the first step in the alliance's plan, Hearn said. The group envisions "a pipeline" to bring underemployed workers into higher-paying jobs.

It would like to expand the program to serve more students with basic skills training, as well as, in the future, provide them with the more advanced training required to enter into the seven targeted jobs.

Many area hospitals already try to support that type of training, Hearn said, by subsidizing advance course work for existing employees or even providing them with paid time off work to take classes, as is the case at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System.

Students in the bridge program, reading at a minimum of an eighth-grade level, and with math skills at a minimum sixth-grade level, will hone those skills in a health industry context, learning health care-related words in literacy courses and solving health-related problems in math class.

The goal is to raise each student's skills by two levels by the end of the program, which in future incarnations may last as long as 15 weeks.

"Essentially the purpose of the bridge program is to increase academic skills via unique teaching methods," Hearn said. "The purpose is to increase their academic skills, and they’re taught in a contextualized fashion for the health care industry."

Contact:
Ron Hearn
Executive Director
Baltimore Alliance for Careers in Healthcare
443-451-9822

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