Home care leader LHC Group is deepening its commitment to home health with plans to train nurses specifically for that sector.
LHC Group President Josh Proffitt told investors during a Bank Of America Securities Home Care conference Monday the company is working with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette College of Nursing to tailor a program targeted at in-home care.
“Not only do we want to get more people applying to nursing schools, but we want to start growing the pool of applicants for in-home because over time we would like to see more and more of those early nurses come directly into the home environment,” Proffitt said. We are working on creating some labs and doing some things with the university to emphasize the in-home side of health delivery.”
LHC Group announced a partnership with the University of Louisiana last spring, investing $20 million in the College of Nursing to recruit and train nurses. The deal provides both in-person and online degrees in 55 offerings to LHC Group employees at a reduced cost.
Home care companies cite the labor shortage as the biggest headwind they face as an industry. Proffitt said the shortage of nurses has become one of LHC Group’s most costly problems because the company has had to rely more on contract nurses, who are more expensive.
Since the pandemic began, many nurses have left staff positions to become contract traveling nurses because they can command higher wages, but LHC Group is trying to mitigate that problem with another initiative it launched early last summer.
“We created a subset team in talent acquisitions that is just recruiting LHC Group alumni,” Proffitt explained “We’re calling it our Return Home program. We’ve already seen in just half a year around 600 employees return back to us through the pretty unique dynamic that we’ve seen during COVID.”
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing estimates demand for registered nurses in the U.S. will grow 7% by the end of the decade from 3 million nurses to 3.3 million. Proffitt said LHC Group is trying to develop partnerships with other nursing colleges similar to the one it has with the University of Louisiana.
