- Illinois: A U.S. district judge last week ruled that Illinois had failed to provide adequate resources for the care of developmentally disabled residents and ordered state officials to devise a plan to address the issue. In the lawsuit, advocates for disabled individuals said a state budget increase for $53.4 million for disabled care services was insufficient to retain workers and maintain care. However, the state argued that it could not afford the amount advocates were requesting—up to an additional $1 billion in funding each year. In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman said she was not authorized to order that funding be increased, so she instead ordered state officials to develop a plan that would improve care for the disabled (Pierog, Reuters
- New Jersey: The Memorial Hospital of Salem County has named Tammy Torres as CEO. Torres, who has been serving as the hospital's interim CEO for several months, previously worked as the CNO and COO of Brandywine Hospital in Pennsylvania and CNO and COO of Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia (Vaidya, Becker's Hospital Review, 8/11).
- New Mexico: The University of New Mexico said it will begin enforcing its no-tobacco policy throughout all of its campuses on August 15. According to officials, the university has implemented an awareness campaign, appropriate signage throughout each campus, and enforcement plans to uphold the policy. Under the policy, all forms of tobacco—including chewing tobacco, cigars, e-cigarettes, and pipes—will be banned, and the majority of the designated smoking areas on campus will be eliminated (AP/Sacramento Bee, 8/14).
Why you're in danger of building the wrong workforce
To succeed in the future, health care organizations will need to provide care in the lowest-cost, most appropriate setting—and to accomplish this, they’ll need a different complement of staff than in the past.
But if today's leaders don't revise their workforce planning strategy, they're in danger of building the wrong workforce, a mistake that will be costly in the long run and could take 10 to 12 years to correct.
Find out what you need to do to revise your approach—starting from the "outside-in."