This multifaceted workforce initiative, developed by and funded to HCA E&R for 2024-25 by the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, seeks to pilot workforce development strategies for cultivating a pipeline of qualified and diverse new entrants into nursing practice in the home care setting, as well as impactful methods for recruiting and retaining top-notch talent amidst a competitive marketplace.
HCA’s objective is to ensure access to home health care services for vulnerable individuals by building and strengthening home care agencies’ abilities to recruit and retain nurses specialized in the delivery of care at home.
The goal of the pilot is to develop a model ‘blueprint’ for implementation by home health care agencies to increase their capacity to serve as a clinical rotation site for nursing students. Providers interested in learning more about hosting BSN students can contact the Clinical RN Rotation Coordinator at: workforce@hcanys.org.
Clinical Home Health RN Rotation Pilot Program
At the academic preparatory level, there is a lack of exposure to the home care practice setting, limiting setting-specific curricula in nursing programs and a prevalence of clinical rotations in acute or facility-based settings. These educational conditions exacerbate the challenges to cultivating a robust and qualified pool of practice-ready nurse graduates for the home health setting.
Home Health Transition to Practice Nurse Residency Pilot Program
This partnering pilot agency will implement a competency-based Transition to Practice Nurse Residency Program designed to facilitate the transition of new graduate RNs, through enrollment in a training and preceptorship program, into RNs with the requisite clinical competencies for practice in the home care setting. The project will evaluate and report on program effectiveness, distilling best practices for future replication.
Cultivating an effective and replicable method for onboarding novice home care nurses will expand the pool of potential employment candidates beyond those currently recruited with more extensive clinical experience.
Home Health Recruitment & Retention Pilot Program
The Home Health Care Recruitment & Retention (R&R) pilot program will develop and implement a model for home health care agencies to increase their capacity to recruit and retain a diverse nursing workforce. The R&R program will recruit and engage at least five agencies across NYS, assess their current R&R practices and conduct a comparative analysis against industry and research-based best practices, identifying key gaps that will serve as the targets for evidence-based interventions, along with the provision of technical support to implement them with the goal of strengthening the agency’s capacity to effectively recruit and retain qualified nurses.
The project will conduct a final R&R assessment and convene a roundtable of leaders from piloting agencies to distill lessons learned and develop a final blueprint for building a meaningful and sustainable R&R program. The resulting blueprint will be used to produce a resource guide with tools to support the development of a sustainable R&R program, and will be disseminated to all New York agencies for adoption. Agencies interested in participating in the R&R pilot can contact Celisia Street at cstreet@hcanys.org.
Support for this statewide initiative is made possible through the generous support of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation.