Workforce pipeline
AWC, yrmc to build new healthcare training facility
It takes more than doctors and nurses to run a hospital. It needs phlebotomists, medical billers and coders, radiology technicians, accountants, business analysts and a wide variety of workers.
Where will this workforce come from? With a shared vision of transforming healthcare education in Yuma County, Arizona Western College and Yuma Regional Medical Center have partnered to create new programs and facilities to train this future workforce.
Early plans include building a new allied health training facility across the street from YRMC, next to the Cancer Center. Construction is expected to begin in 2024. The three-story, 75,000-square-foot building will also be home to medical residency training at YRMC.
The training facility will include programs in a variety of health fields, such as behavioral health, phlebotomy technician, medical billing and coding, community health worker, radiologic technology, nursing, certified nursing assistant, massage therapy, health aid and medical assistant.
The facility will serve short-term students seeking certificates as well as those who want associate degrees, bachelor’s degrees and beyond.
“Hospitals and healthcare systems across the country struggle to fill vacant positions that they have, and we’re no different. We struggle mightily,” said Dr. Robert Trenschel, YRMC president and CEO. “But this partnership between our organizations gives us an opportunity to have a steady pipeline of skilled workforce members that can come into our system here.
“And it’s also wonderful for the community because you can live and grow up here. You can go to school here, and you can get a well-paying job right here at the hospital or other healthcare organization in our community.”
Goals for the joint training facility include improved local health metrics, preventing the “brain drain” of local students leaving for education elsewhere and not returning to work in the Yuma region, maximizing local investment by sharing facilities and equipment, and building sustainable health training programs.
Dr. Daniel Corr, president of AWC, explained why the partnership between the college and the hospital is a “big deal.” “You cannot have a thriving community without a healthy community, a community with high-quality healthcare, and you can’t have high quality healthcare without the workers to support that.
“It’s so much more than a building. The building will symbolize it, but what will happen in the building and the impact of what will result from our joint efforts,” Corr added.
Spearheading the project are Reetika Dhawan, AWC vice president of workforce development and CTE, and Dr. Trudie Milner, YRMC chief operations officer.
“This partnership began with a shared passion for meeting the needs of our community. Yuma
Regional Medical Center is one of the area’s largest private employers – they are a hub of our
community. I was excited to sit down with them and learn about how we could partner to better
meet their needs,” Dhawan said.
She added: “We are going to bring every single program, every single training you see in the Phoenix area, you’re going to have that in Yuma County. And that’s our mission, that’s our vision, to bring those opportunities to Yuma County so that our next generation don’t have to leave Yuma. They stay here and they work here at Yuma Regional Medical Center.”
Milner noted that a workforce of highly trained individuals will result in high-quality healthcare. “When people think about healthcare, they might think in more traditional terms, and yes, clinicians and so on are clearly part of that equation. But this is broader than that. It’s much
bigger. Healthcare takes many, many different kinds of expertise and specialties to be successful. Things like data and analytics, IT, healthcare administration. It’s more than just patient care. Supply chain, and things that we can’t even imagine yet that we might need in order to support our industry.”
One floor will include classrooms, training spaces, a state-of-the-art simulation lab for all kinds of professionals to develop and enhance their skills.
The facility will also include
an institutional research program, with the hope of attracting top physicians to Yuma.
“Many times when physicians come to practice in a rural community, they obviously come out of an academic program. And I think what people forget sometimes is that there’s still a strong desire to do research, to help identify new treatment methods, new ways of approaching challenges that they’re facing,” Milner explained.
The building will intentionally be within sight of the hospital. “Not only do you want to be able to educate people in a beautiful facility, but the idea that the building could be within the line of sight of where people are going to come to work and what the healthcare system represents,” Milner said.
The facility will also provide students with one-ofkind opportunities. “For community college students studying at Arizona Western College to interact with the professionals here at Yuma Regional Medical Center, to be involved in the research activities, is really just unprecedented for community colleges, and we’re just so thrilled that it will be your community college right here in Yuma that will provide those opportunities,” Corr said.
The leadership structure of the partnership is unique. “It’s our two organizations working together but one of things that we have built into our partnership is that Reetika has an official role here at the hospital and I have an official role at the college, and Dr. Trenschel and Dr. Corr did that purposely,” Milner explained.
“It binds us together in both of our organizations, and it’s going to mean that we’re going to be working together and understanding each other. Having a foot in both camps is a very powerful idea versus just parallel paths,” she added.
Corr explained why this project is so important for AWC. “We’re a community college, but we call ourselves a college of the community, which means if there’s a challenge in this community, it really is incumbent on us to step forward and be part of that solution.”