Employment As A Whole Person Strategy

By Monica E. Oss, Chief Executive Officer, OPEN MINDS

Health plans are making more investments in addressing social support needs of their members, with the twin goals of improved member health status and reduced health care spending. We’ve covered investments in housing and in nutrition programs.

But health plan investments in employment programs—a key social determinant of health—are not common. We had the opportunity to hear about one—Pathways To Work— from Dan LaVallee, Senior Director, The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Health Plan Center for Social Impact, in his session, Reframing The Definition Of Health Care To Include Consumer Employment Programs, which took place during The 2022 OPEN MINDS Care Innovation Summit at The 2022 OPEN MINDS Executive Leadership Retreat.

UPMC is a health care provider and insurer with 92,000 staff members, 40 academic, community, and specialty hospitals, 800 medical offices and outpatient sites, 4,900 employed physicians, and an array of rehab, retirement, and long-term care options. UPMC’s health plan serves more than 4 million members.

The Pathways To Work initiative provides training, education, and direct support to increase access to employment for UPMC Health Plan members. Initially, the program focused on traditional emergency medical services, such as training and employing first responders from economically disadvantaged communities. The program has expanded to include nursing support roles, medical assistants, customer service representatives, warehouse workers, environmental service associates, and food service attendants. The services offered by the program include resume assistance, interview preparation, skills assessment, and training. To be eligible for the program, individuals must be unemployed or underemployed, or have intellectual or physical challenges.

Mr. LaVallee described the origins of Pathways To Work, UPMC’s employment program. “Every time we get a new Medicaid member to our plan, which is weekly, we’re asked if they want help finding a job,” he said. “And in our communities and across the state, one in three people were filing jobless claims. We were required to do outreach and connect them with career resources. So we felt, why not just help them find a job with us at UPMC? That’s why we created Pathways To Work.”

The two pillars of Pathways To Work, job navigation and training programs/partners, have been extremely successful. For job navigation, the numbers include approximately 200 hires per month statewide (60% in Pittsburgh), over 200 individuals currently active in pipeline, over 20 applications submitted per week, and over 20 new inquiries per day. Training results include 15 EMS cohorts in the past two years, ten Workforce Investment Board referral and training partnerships, over 50 community partnerships for job fairs and referral pipelines, and over $3 million in federal/state investments in local communities.

The program has been in existence in some form since 1968. Mr. LaVelle attributes their success to two attributes—addressing barriers to employment on an individual basis and creating community partnerships.

Addressing barriers to employment on an individual basis “Part of the journey is meeting people where they are, and then learning about what they can bring to the table, “said Mr. LaVelle. “We have tuition assistance, but we have to show that you can have a great career without a college degree. Some of our hospitals are getting rid of the high school or GED requirements, which is beautiful, because that’s another way into our organization, and then we’ll help support people along their path. We’ve had much success in finding work for people who had struggles with addiction and mental health. Sometimes it’s as simple as reaching somebody and getting them into a training program. We’re reaching people in their hardest moments, when they’re signing up for Medicaid, but we’re helping them find work, which I think is a beautiful thing.”

Mr. LaVallee also discussed the ongoing barriers to employment that must be dismantled. “We need to continue to improve on how we hire individuals with disabilities,” he said. “We’ve totally revamped how we do accommodations, because we realized that there weren’t enough coming in based on the amount of people that apply for jobs. We need better systematic childcare supports moving forward if we’re going to recruit people who need help with caring for kids while they work.”

“We built our team so job seekers can have an advocate, “said Mr. LaVallee. “The hiring manager knows if an individual might not have exactly what it says in a job description, but they do have X, Y, and Z skill to make up for it.”

Create community partnerships: “Although we have a wonderful recruitment team, we didn’t have a group that could go into the community and talk about the jobs that we have here, “said Mr. LaVallee. “So we developed partners in the community, including with Freedom House, which was training and hiring people who were deemed unemployable, Freedom House helps people get into ambulance services careers. In addition, we partner with other organizations to build a referral pipeline of people that are ready to work. Through our Workforce Investment Board, we have a chance to build a scalable model for every county in America. The time for talking talk about working in silos had to end.”

To increase the success of the program, UPMC is also testing some programs around retention. “What can we do if we stick with people a little bit more?” said Mr. LaVallee. “How can we empower our community? Our providers? What can we do with our medical providers, our non-medical providers to keep them here for the long-term?” As a result, UPMC is seeing positive results. In some of the high need entry level roles, turnover can typically be as high as 40%. But turnover for Pathways To Work program participants has only been at approximately 15%. “These are preliminary numbers, but I hope it sticks,” said Mr. LaVallee. “The numbers give me quite a bit of hope. This is about the investment in people and building that bond and trust.”

In the long run, for Mr. LaVallee the reward simply comes from giving people a chance. “Sometimes, it’s as simple as reaching somebody who’s had experience and getting them in quickly or getting them into a training program as much as we possibly can. We just want to lead with hope, compassion, and empathy to help people as much as we can.”