In almost every meeting I have with faculty, staff, and students, the subject of the IHP’s vision for growth is raised. I think this is in part because we have been talking about growth for more than a year now, but also because of our newly launched ENRICH initiative.
Just recently, Provost Alex Johnson led a standing-room-only Town Hall meeting describing the ENRICH model and our plans for addressing some of the challenges faced by the IHP. Led by an Executive Committee of James Dupont, Heather Easter, Atlas Evans, Alex Johnson, and Denis Stratford, our ENRICH model looks at opportunities in our existing academic and continuing professional development programs as well as opportunities to develop new educational programs, all within the context of supporting our faculty and staff in the process of innovation. To do all this work, we are getting the support of consultants in the areas we want to assess and possibly make change. The process has been well planned and thoughtful with the hope of getting us to the best possible future for the IHP.
But what are the goals of this initiative? Why is the IHP undertaking this planning process now? What do we hope to accomplish through this process? There are both internal and external factors at play here that make the ENRICH initiative important for the IHP’s future and the future of health care delivery. Two years ago, the IHP community spent almost six months discussing our future as part of the strategic planning process. We identified six major priorities for our future, with one of them focused on continuing to regularly assess programs to ensure the quality of, modify, and/or launch new degree programs that will drive improvements in health care. Our strategic plan gives direction and focus to this work.
By examining each of our current programs and optimizing enrollment in each one, we are being efficient and effective with our current resources. The health care workforce continues to grow and is expected to increase much faster than the average for all occupations according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As the population ages, and there is a concomitant increase in the number of chronic illness per adult, the need for health care providers will also increase. For example, the employment of PAs is projected to grow 31% from 2018 to 2028 and the employment of nurse practitioners is expected to increase by 28% in that same time period (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019). And while the increase in the needs for providers is uneven among all of our programs, it remains clear that we are preparing the providers of the future, people who can work across disciplines and are comfortable providing care in an interprofessional team model. Our graduates are those who will be ready to transform health care for the benefit of the population. Shouldn’t we be producing as many of these kinds of providers as we can? We need to be a significant contributor to that workforce.
But there are other health care workforce challenges we are not fully addressing, and the ENRICH process will help to uncover some of those opportunities. This process will allow us to ask ourselves, what does the future of health care delivery look like and how can we be an important contributor to that future? Just recently, I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by Farhan Syed, Vice President for Learning Solutions at LinkedIn. He shared that the skills needed to compete in today’s workforce are changing faster than ever with more than one-third of job skills learned today changing in the next five years. The need for high quality continuing education and professional development, the kind that IHP is known for, can contribute significantly to excellence in the health care workforce.
We also know that the world of health care delivery is changing as digital solutions become more widely used. It has been suggested that the promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is greater in health care than in any other industry, and we have barely scratched the surface in ways that AI can help us provide better, more compassionate, and cost-effective care to patients and populations. The ENRICH process will help position the IHP develop a workforce for a changing health care delivery landscape by helping us to identify new trends in health care.
I am excited about the opportunity to build on the excellence we have created over the last 43 years and create new opportunities to contribute to an improved health care delivery system. Our challenge is to lead in the era of a changing health care workforce and we are certainly up to that challenge.