GLP wants, Medicare Advantage headwinds, a Medicaid landscape that looks different every quarter. Payer leadership right now means making durable decisions in an environment that keeps moving, and the organizations pulling ahead are the ones that stopped waiting for stability before acting. Becker's fifth annual Fall Payer Issues Roundtable convenes more than 500 executive-level attendees and 70-plus speakers November 2nd and 3rd at the Swiss Hotel Chicago. Two days of senior level dialogue on affordability, benefit design, value-based care, and the strategies shaping how care gets financed and delivered. Featuring a celebrity keynote from Pro Football Hall of Famer, Amit Smith. Agenda and registration at beckerspayer.com. Click events in the upper right. Hello, everyone. This is Jacob Emerson with the Becker's Payer Issues podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by two leaders from UPMC. Dan LaValle serves as Associate Vice President of Community Engagement at UPMC Health Plan, and Dr. Brandy Hershberger serves as Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Academic Affairs at UPMC. Dr. Hershberger, Dan, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. And Dr. Hershberger, I'll turn it over to you first. If you could tell our audience a little bit more about yourself, your background in healthcare, and what it is that you do today at UPMC. Sure. So thanks so much for having us today. So a little bit about myself. I am a nurse of 23 years, a chief nurse of eight years. I grew up as a baby nurse at UPMC, primarily in emergency medicine. And then I went to the for-profit for about seven years outside of UPMC and came back to UPMC in 2021. I started out as the chief nursing officer for UPMC East and UPMC McKeesport and then transitioned into this role in 2022. Currently in this role, I am responsible for the nursing and allied health pipelining, building our pipelines to gain a stronger workforce. Additionally, I oversee our eight UPMC proprietary schools of nursing, along with our 11 UPMC allied health schools. that are UPMC owned and operated. And then additionally, just maintaining our academic partnerships and really ensuring all of our students have a great clinical experience when they come to UPMC. So thanks so much for having us today. Wonderful. Thanks, Brandy. How about you, Dan? Thanks, Jacob, for having us. Brandy, you're wonderful. It's always fun to do this with you. I'm Dan LaValle. I'm a native Yenzer, as we say. My grandmother had a bakery on the University of Pittsburgh's campus for about 60 years. And, you know, probably fortunately for the community, I don't have those baking skills. I watched her make an incredible difference in the community, but I chose health care. And I've been at UPMC for the last 12 years. I lead our community engagement team on the health plan side of UPMC, which includes a wonderful team that meets people where they are every single day and high rises out in the community and also builds signature community programs that we call it. like our Pathways to Work program, which we'll talk about today. We have two neighborhood centers that function as partnership community centers in Pittsburgh and Erie as well, that we do a lot of this work. And it's just so meaningful to me. So it's great to be here. I love it. A legacy family thing for you, Dan, of community engagement in some way, shape or form. Always. And my great grandfather was actually a baking apprentice when he came here from Germany. So it's full circle. We're talking about apprenticeships. That's awesome. I didn't know that, Dan. I should have shared that before. It's wonderful. That's awesome. Well, I appreciate you both taking the time to chat with us today. Staying on the lines of community engagement, Dan, and all the work that you, your teams, everybody at UPMC is doing, talk to us a little bit about the latest on workforce development. I know the health system, the health plan, has a lot of different initiatives here and progress to talk about in this space. UPMC Health Plan specifically has achieved lasting assistance for those on Medicaid to find meaningful careers within the broader health system. For our audience who might not be familiar, give us some of the details there and what's the latest progress. Thanks so much, Jacob. It has been an incredible year. We just passed our 11 person hired off our UPMC4U Medicaid plan into UPMC with leaders like Brandy I just can even imagine how wonderful this has been over these past seven years We started our Pathways to Work program that we called it in partnership with our State Department of Human Services about seven years ago when they had asked us to help our Medicaid members find work if they were interested. And it really built into a program that I couldn't have even imagined back in 2019. We went through the pandemic, of course, when And one in three of our neighbors were filing jobless claims. But we still needed leaders in our hospitals and community to care for those that were sick at that time. And even as the pandemic ended, the need in the community to help individuals find life changing careers did not go away. And it's just been incredibly beautiful. We really started the program off with trying to provide individuals who were work ready and had skills into careers at UPMC, whether they were in nursing with Brandy or calling on the phone to make sure people had the coverage and the medical information and supplies that they would need, especially during those challenging times. But then what it did is it kind of taught us that, of course, we can support individuals in finding a career they might be ready for. But it was also an opportunity to build new training programs and get into new sector apprenticeships, as Governor Shapiro and Labor Secretary Walker here in Pennsylvania have called it. And that has really changed the game for us. Brandy will go through all the wonderful work that she's leading on apprenticeships. I think that the most beautiful thing is, you know, I remember growing up here, you know, as a young child watching, you know, how Western Pennsylvania became a place to build national models to care for our communities, whether it was the Children's Health Insurance Program or other programs. We feel like we have that now, too, with workforce development for those who really need it. And so, you know, I was looking at a story this morning, Jacob, from one of our team members who was, you know, sharing that, you know, we have them share every Monday, you know, stories that they have from the past week. And, you know, one that really struck me was an individual that, you know, was homeless and, you know, was struggling and but had skills and just fallen on hard times and was able to get into a career at UPMC, but had expressed an interest in joining an apprenticeship down the road, which now I know the game has changed because, you know, we've gotten to that point. So it's just so wonderful. Shout out to our incredible folks on the facility side. They started our first apprenticeship. It's called a facilities maintenance technician. Kelly, our leader on that side was so wonderful. And that success allowed us to work together to build all these new programs that Brandy has. And she's just the best leader and someone I look up to very much. And, you know, we're having a good day in the neighborhood, as we say here in Pittsburgh. And that story you just shared there, Dan, that singular story, one of 11,000 out there now, that all comes back to UPMC and your Pathways to Work program. It's amazing, just the human story, but also the scale here that you're talking about. You teed Brandy up in terms of all the different healthcare apprenticeships that are available across the system. So Brandon, do you want to talk a little bit about that? What's available today? And then how you see this all trickling down, how this all helps address the workforce challenges, not just locally, but how you think other systems across the country can really learn from UPMC and scale this in their markets as well. Sure, absolutely. I think that the majority of people are used to apprenticeships being in like electrician or, you know, facilities and so forth. Well, we were innovated and we wanted to bridge this into the healthcare apprenticeships. And last year, we were able to get approved, the first in Pennsylvania, an R&R or registered nurse resident or an LPN to RN apprentice. So we currently are running with that apprentice currently at our UPMC Schools of Nursing located in Erie, Pennsylvania. Additionally, we were able to get our surgical tech apprenticeship approved along with pharmacy technician apprenticeships and our imaging or diagnostic tech apprenticeship approved. Now, these apprenticeships, they help individuals who never thought health care was a career that was possible. And they gain valuable related technical instruction or on-the-job training along with their academics that really train them to take their certification or licensure exam at the end. And they learn. And they're actually mentored by the experts in our health care arena today. And they guaranteed employment along which helps them to fill those key positions in our workforce that we so need to provide access to our patients and quality of care And these were instrumental across the board to give opportunities to our folks out there. Absolutely. And it sounds like this really does span the whole gamut of possibilities in terms of employment. It's not just clinical, but you mentioned electrical work, even Brandy. It's fascinating. Dan, what else is out there for you all in terms of workforce development, training efforts beyond the apprenticeships and what's coming next? Give the audience a little bit of a teaser in terms of plans to expand your efforts here. Oh yeah, Jacob, thank you for that. And it is, you know, it's beautiful. We have been able to expand our overall pathways to work for them across the Commonwealth. So anybody that's any type of barrier to work, no matter what it is, can reach out to our exceptional team and they'll help them through hopefully a career at UPMC, but we also have many other partners that do that work. So that has been tremendously exciting as we look to serve the entirety of the Commonwealth. But what's coming up next is related to a milestone that we just had, actually, which is beautiful. So we had relaunched a program that we call Freedom House 2.0. And you all might know a little bit about Freedom House. It's been on multiple episodes of recent TV series and had an Emmy-winning documentary. It was about the beginning of emergency medical service in this country in the 60s that happened right here in the Hill District neighborhood of Pittsburgh. to help serve communities that were underserved that really had no emergency service there at any time. And it, of course, came into what we all know is the model across the country to serve those in need. And it's how EMS was built across the country. But we really realized we had a need here in Western Pennsylvania and across the Commonwealth to train people in pre-employment, trauma-informed, six-week program that was beautiful to get individuals into high-need careers that we had. We just reached our five-year anniversary of relaunching that program. I was so special at the last graduation to have one of the original members of Freedom House in the 60s join and talk to the graduates and share quite a bit about that. And so we're continuing to expand that program. And the best part is that we're launching, and we just launched, an EMT apprenticeship program based on that model. So that will, of course, serve those that would become EMTs within UPMC. UPMC. But the best part about apprenticeships, Jacob, is that if you build them and you get them registered like Brandy talked about, they can be replicated across other organizations and training providers across the Commonwealth. And I think that's why Secretary Walker in particular has been such a great partner in helping us push this, because we can start this here and then work with other systems and training partners to do this work. So we're really excited. And all of Brandy's work is going to continue to expand, not just here, but across the country. It's a perfect segue that the replicability of these models across the country. Can you speak to that for the audience listening in, wanting to replicate the work that UPMC is already doing on the ground? How can they also have their educational institutions strengthen the local workforce pipelines like you all have? Of course, Jacob. And it was something that was certainly new to me. I had to learn it's taken Brandi and I years to get this down, but I think we're there. Because here's the deal. No matter where you are across our wonderful country, you are in a place that has a workforce investment board. Every single county in America has that. And they are the place where employers like us, also Medicaid plans who are looking to help our members find work, and then educational institutions can go to build training programs that can be then invested in with federal or state dollars or private dollars. And what they taught us is that, you know, especially here in Pennsylvania too, if you can build a program like our Freedom House 2.0, which was not an apprenticeship, but led to it, of course, that there are dollars there that if you blend and braid the funds together, that can be put into these programs no matter where you are. And I think that's the best thing. So anyone out here, you know, interested in building a program like this, whether it's an apprenticeship or a pre-employment training program, find your Workforce Investment Board in the county that you're in, and they'll help you see how this can be replicated and done. And I think the best part is that we have collaborations with other hospital systems, other payers, other educational programs across the country, because we all learn better together. And we're just so excited to lead in that way. And of course, we've had our challenges with it and we open about that But that the best thing And that how you can scale these programs and really turn them into national models Brandy anything you add there Advice for other leaders listening in on how to continue to expand models like these Yeah, Dan's spot on. Partnership with our workforce boards are essential. And then with our institutions, our middle and high schools, our other healthcare arenas in our community, We have to be on this venture together because we're all facing the same workforce challenges. So we have to come together to have the same common goal to implement things such as apprenticeships in our communities to provide sustainable workforce in the state of Pennsylvania. And it's essential. Like we are really opening up the doors for our middle and high school students and partnering with our high school and middle schools to come in to have immersive experiences. And we have several. So Baldwin High School comes into UPMC, McGee. They experience every level because for a student, they always hear about nursing and physician. I want to be a nurse or I want to be a physician. But newsflash, not everybody does. But we have so many multitudes of positions that students get to explore and say, yes, I want to be an imaging tech, a tech. I want to be a surgical tech. I want to do this. So there are so many avenues behind the scenes, even non-patient facing, such as finance, human resources, the health plan, that we can show them, allow them to shadow an experience. And some will say, it's for me, or some will say, no, it's not for me. But that is that partnership that we need to have that is essential for our young to grow and to progress into careers that they want to be into. Absolutely. No, it's a great reminder there and great bits of advice from you both. Before we go, what else are we missing? Any other details? Last little bits you want to add in for the audience today. Brandy, you want to start us off? I will say, fortunately, all of our apprenticeships have been filled thus far because we've had a huge interest and that's the good part. But stay tuned because if you're interested in any one of our healthcare apprenticeships, they will be available in the year to come on upmccareers.com. And it will have that apprentice right there in the job category so that you can apply. But I'm hoping people listening to this today will take these apprenticeships as soon as we have outcomes and you can run with it. You can run with it and you can build your own apprenticeships in health care that can help feed your workforce and create meaningful careers for our community. You know, Brandy and Jacob, as I was listening to you there, Brandy, you know, I think the most beautiful thing is I think about a couple individuals I know who are in our apprenticeships and have gone through. You know, you have people that we, of course, they were on our Medicaid plan, part of our family that we call it at UPMC already. And then going through a training program, becoming a nurse, becoming an imaging tech. When Brandy explained, you know, that incredible career to me and how you can start at a younger age, get some credits, go have very minimal debt and be making a difference in our communities. And I think what is so beautiful, you have someone who might have been on Medicaid, had a challenge and barrier to work, you know, gets through these programs and then is serving the very community that they grew up in. You know, there's nothing greater in my mind than that. And that's that's who we are at UPMC. That's our mission. That's how we want to show up. And we'll continue to do this and highlight this so that others can see. And hopefully we can have this as a national model to support our communities that makes us all stronger. And Jacob, if I can just add one other thing, we have actually a second career who is going into our farm tech apprentice that wants to try something different. So it doesn't matter what age you are, and you want a different career choice, apprenticeship is the way to go. Yeah, that's a great last point there, Brandy. I appreciate that hook on. Thank you both so much. Please keep us updated on the expansion of Freedom House, how everything goes with the EMT apprenticeship. We'd love to hear the progress there and what you achieve. But thank you both so much for taking the time and for sharing your expertise with our audience. We really appreciate it. If you'd like to listen to more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare, you can visit Becker's HospitalReview.com.
