An Illinois legislator is traveling the state, looking for solutions to a nationwide shortage of health care workers.
Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi is the U.S. representative for Illinois’ 8th District. While Krishnamoorthi’s district covers a swath of Chicago suburbs, the Democrat is a graduate of Peoria’s Richwoods High School.
He visited OSF Saint Francis Medical Center on Tuesday to hear about its programs for attracting and retaining medical professionals, as well as what organizations like OSF still need. Krishnamoorthi says education, childcare and transportation are the most frequent needs.
“We need students to be able to get from where they are, whether it’s at school or home, to the place where they can learn the skills at issue, and then into a job,” he said. “And so what we’re finding is that we need more flexibility in the dollars that are being provided from the federal government to be able to use for these other purposes.”
Krishnamoorthi is one of the architects of the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century (Perkins V) Act that was signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018. This was the fifth reauthorization of the Perkins Act that provides more than $1 billion in federal funding for workforce development programs.
That includes programs like the apprenticeships, scholarships and stipends offered by OSF Healthcare. OSF Chief Human Resource Office Shelley Parn said, for instance, the organization offers full-ride scholarships through the Saint Francis Medical Center College of Nursing.
“It’s really about how we can financially support individuals while they’re going to school, and then how do we kind of create those wrap-around services around career counseling and career pathing here at OSF Healthcare,” said Parn.
OSF’s health care pipeline in Peoria extends beyond hiring and collegiate-level education. It includes the area’s public schools.
OSF Senior Vice President of Innovation Becky Buchen told Krishnamoorthi that a group of around 40 Peoria Public Schools District 150 students attend a biweekly class at OSF’s Jump Trading Simulation and Education Center. Students learn about a different career in health care each session, covering everything from doctors and nurses to technical support.
“How do we get more students into these programs, into the pipeline for the healthcare industry? Because, right now, there’s such a shortage that if we don’t address it patients are going to be affected,” said Krishnamoorthi. “Our seniors are going to be affected, and we don’t want that to happen.”
Krishnamoorthi spoke with a roundtable of OSF and community leaders about other programs attempting to fill the gaps in health care jobs. Those included work-based learning CNA programs at Illinois Central College, a pharmacy tech program, opportunities for retirees to work and flexible roles that allow for health care workers to function in a capacity similar to “gig” employees.
Parn said programs like these and aggressive seasonal hiring help prepare for periods like now, when the hospital system feels the strain of a notably active respiratory illness season.
“The reality is that we have to continue to stretch ourselves to think about how we can help them do the work differently, or how we create the right types of virtual processes and systems to assist the caregivers within the hospital setting,” she said. “The multi-pronged approach around how we support our workforce is critical in times like these, because then you can augment the care to assist those that are doing the work.”
Though Krishnamoorthi’s past efforts have been bipartisan, he is concerned about the effect any form of potential freeze of federal funding could have on the programs supported by the Perkins Act.
“You saw what happened a couple of weeks ago when a freeze went into effect, which is that basically the recipients, the beneficiaries of these funds, were completely paralyzed,” he said.
Krishnamoorthi’s comments follow other Trump administration actions raising concerns among health care professionals, including attempted cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the expected impacts on health research.
The reauthorization of Perkins V in 2018 extended the bill through fiscal year 2024.
As Krishnamoorthi returns to Washington and the discussion of the next reauthorization, he plans to request more flexibility in how fund recipients can utilize their federal dollars to meet the needs of the modern health care workforce.
“The No. 1 job of educators, certainly for post-secondary education, is to make sure that everyone gets into what I call the greatest social welfare program devised by human beings, which is a J-O-B,” he said. “We need to get everyone into a job and a middle-class sustaining career.”
