FY 2024 PCA Sample Project Work Plan

Over the last decade, the state of Washsota has seen an increase in the cultural diversity of its population, which has increased the demand to have a more diverse workforce. Along with the need to have a more culturally and linguistically competent health workforce, Washsota has over 460 Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs), which includes HPSA facilities, geographic areas, and population groups that need health care practitioners to alleviate this shortage. Many primary care providers are operating either at or over 1,310 patients to 1 provider (national ratio per the 2020 County Health Rankings data), which poses a problem as it limits access to care to new individuals in need of health care services. 

In Washsota, there are 20 health centers with a total of 210 health center service sites. These health centers are a combination of HRSA-funded health centers and look-alike organizations.

Based on our T/TA needs analysis, we recognize health centers need to focus on recruiting and retaining a competent health workforce and ensuring that the staff they recruit can address the specific sociocultural needs of the members of their communities. 

To address these needs, Washsota PCA has partnered with University of AXBY (UAXBY) and the MediAssoc Partners to focus on improving health center recruitment and retention efforts. These collaborative partnerships will give health centers the training and resources they need to implement and/or revise staffing strategies to attract linguistically and culturally competent candidates. Research shows that recruitment and retention efforts implemented with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in mind not only improve clinical quality and reduce health disparities in the community but also enhance job satisfaction and workforce well-being. 

All our T/TA activities are designed to specifically meet health centers where they are and to address their unique needs as they face workforce shortages and other challenges. We developed our activities based on proven best practices. 

The Washsota PCA recently hired a data analyst to help us understand the unique characteristics of our health centers and correlate them to current health center workforce trends. This will be foundational for the T/TA needs assessment so that we can help health centers identify the type of workforce T/TA that will be most beneficial them. 

Furthermore, we will use the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health’s set of national culturally and linguistically appropriate services (CLAS) standards. For the purposes of this objective, we aim to implement The Principal Standard (no.1). This CLAS standard will help our health centers address their patients’ cultural health-related beliefs, preferred languages, health literacy levels, and other communication needs. 

Based on our preliminary analysis, our activities will vary based on the needs of the health centers in the state. This is important since we are a large state and not all health centers face the same workforce challenges. For instance, some activities will target health centers in urban areas differently than in rural areas. We are confident that we will achieve the designated objective target, T/TA session target, T/TA participation target, and participation usefulness target by the end of the period of performance. 

Activity overview: The purpose of the R&R Forum is to improve health center strategies to recruit and retain culturally and linguistically competent health center staff. The forum T/TA topics will center around recruitment and retention, cultural competency training, promoting health equity, workforce development plans, performance management, managing staff turnover, and more. 

This forum will be held with our partners University of AXBY (UAXBY) and the MediAssoc Partners, and the forum will highlight and disseminate best practices and resources to health center HR staff and leadership teams. 

The forum directly addresses an identified T/TA need of recruiting and retaining a culturally and linguistically competent health workforce to appropriately address the specific sociocultural needs of their community. This is done by offering a range of topics and working with health centers from across the state, allowing health centers to receive the T/TA that is most critical for them to address this challenge. 

Modality, frequency, length, and training purpose and objectives: Though the forum is one event, we will be developing and delivering two in-person sessions. One session will be held each day of the two-day forum. Each session will be six hours in length giving time for participants to work collaboratively with similar health centers. 

The sessions will be divided into different learning modules that will include presentation and break-out sessions to facilitate peer-to-peer learning. Each session will include modules focused on health equity and increasing staff skills in interpersonal interaction and cross-cultural understanding. The training objectives for each session will align with the overarching purpose to recruit and retain culturally and linguistically competent health center staff.

Partner Organizations:

UAXBY and MediAssoc Partners will support this activity in two ways:

• Support attendance by informing their partners, staff, and others about the event through their newsletters and other communication channels.
• MediAssoc Partners and UAXBY subject matter experts will help create the tools, resources, and facilitate the R&R Forum sessions.

How the activity will support health center performance domains:

1. Workforce: Our forum will focus on the recruitment, employee development, and retention of more competent staff to meet community specific needs.
2. Quality, Patient Care, and Safety: Culturally competent staff increases health equity which in turn promotes improved clinical outcomes.
3. Access and Affordability: Our forum aims to improve health centers’ ability to provide access to comprehensive, affordable, and culturally and linguistically appropriate health services in a timely and effective manner.
4. Patient Experience: The planned forum will support health centers in improving their patient-provider satisfaction and patient-centered care coordination by enhancing the culturally appropriate care provided to patients. 

It is our intention that this activity will assist health centers to make positive strides in recruiting a culturally and linguistically competent workforce. Many providers want to make a difference in their communities, and this training will give health center leaders the tools they need to attract and support clinicians and the communities they serve. 

The R&R Forum is the primary activity in this budget year that will help us make progress toward our objective targets, participation targets, and participant rating of usefulness target. It will account for two T/TA sessions. 

We estimate an attendance of 26 participants total (13 participants in each session), with 5 participants from each of 5-6 health centers. We anticipate that the slides and the best practice resources will be downloaded 50 times throughout the period of performance. 

We have historically received high participant ratings for forums like this one and anticipate receiving an average usefulness score of 4.45 by the attendees. 

We anticipate this activity will represent 25-30% of our objective target, 22% of T/TA session targets, 25.3% attainment of T/TA participation target, and a higher average than our participant rating target. Coupled with other activities for this year and throughout the period of performance, we will be on track to meet or exceed our established targets by the end of the period of performance.