Allied Health Workforce and Services: Workshop Summary by Steve Olson

Author:Steve Olson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 0309220629
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2012-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

COMMUNITY COLLEGES AND THE EDUCATION OF ALLIED HEALTH PROFESSIONALS IN RURAL AREAS

The RHRC at the University of Washington, with support from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Office of Rural Health Policy, has been studying

• why community colleges are important to the allied health workforce and to rural communities,

• which allied health occupations are most relevant to rural areas and can be educated in community colleges,

• how many allied health programs are (and are not) located within commuting distance of rural populations, and

• how many small rural hospitals are located near allied health education programs.

The yet-unpublished study has drawn expert input from the American Association of Community Colleges, the National Network of Health Career Programs in Community Colleges, and the Rural Community College Alliance. Its main data source has been the U.S. Department of Education’s Interdisciplinary Postsecondary Education Data System, and it has used definitions of allied health programs from the U.S. Department of Education’s Classification of Instruction Programs.

Community colleges are extremely important to rural economic development, said Skillman, and in many rural communities they are the only higher education institutions accessible to their populations. “They work generally with their communities, so to the extent to which rural folks can train in their own communities, it will greatly increase the likelihood that they will work in those communities,” said Skillman. Furthermore, many students in allied health education programs can be job ready after completing community college programs. For this reason, many rural health care programs use a “grow your own” approach. They attract people from rural areas and train them in rural areas to increase the chances that they will stay in those areas.

Skillman and her colleagues developed a list of 18 “rural-relevant allied health occupations” that can be job ready after training at a community college:

1. Dental assistant

2. Dental hygienist

3. Health information/medical records technician

4. Medical assistant

5. Occupational therapist assistant

6. Pharmacy technician/assistant

7. Physical therapist assistant

8. Veterinary technician/assistant

9. Cardiovascular technologist

10. Electrocardiograph technician

11. EMT/paramedic

12. Nuclear medical technologist

13. Radiation therapist

14. Respiratory care therapist

15. Surgical technologist

16. Diagnostic sonographer/ultrasound technician

17. Radiographer

18. Clinical/medical laboratory technician

Education for these professions can also occur at institutions other than community colleges, or training can be on the job for some. But community colleges play a major role in educating people in these occupations. For example, half of all medical assistants in 2000-2008 were educated in community colleges, while 72 percent of surgical technologists and 82 percent of physical therapy assistants were educated in community colleges.

Skillman and her colleagues mapped community colleges that had at least one of these rural-relevant 18 allied health programs to find areas that lacked access to these programs. Not surprisingly, large areas of the United States, especially in the Midwest and West, did not have community college allied health programs. Overall, they found, 78 percent of rural populations in the country are within a 60-minute drive of a community college program with at least one of those 18 allied health occupations, with a lower percentage in smaller towns. In isolated rural areas in the West, only 35 percent are within an hour drive of a community college allied health education program.

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