KSHE Update
 

Greetings from the HFL Program at OCTC!

Print this Article | Send to Colleague

Greetings from the HFL Program at OCTC!

This fall, we will have enrolled students from 35 states! he HFL program is also seeing newly minted HFL and HFF credentials issued each semester. It will not be long before you commonly encounter someone with these credentials working in healthcare. In the following paragraphs, I want to share some very big news and happenings for the HFL program at OCTC. If you read the KSHE education update, I left you with a bit of a teaser regarding happenings at the 2018 ASHE annual conference in Seattle. This was a big event for KSHE and for the OCTC HFL program. There are also some very important conversations  happening with the Department of Education right here at home in Kentucky that I would like to share.

First, at the ASHE conference, there were two very big alignments that occurred that will echo through the healthcare facilities profession for a very long time. The first item is the understanding and support for the HFL program at OCTC to be a single-portal Work & Learn academic program for our profession. In other words, ASHE fully supports building the academic credentials for our profession for management and technicians through OCTC HFL. This will be based on online academics partnered with more than 5,000 hospitals as the academic labs for the program. ASHE will develop a Certified Healthcare Facilities Technician (CHFT) certification to complement the academic Healthcare Facilities Technician (HFT) academic credential. If this is the first time hearing about this, I discussed this new program late last year. I expect to have this in place in 2019. I cannot begin to tell you how important this for our profession! I will continue to update you on progress through this newsletter.

The second big happening at the Seattle conference was the commitment by one of the largest healthcare facilities management companies to commit all new hires to the OCTC HFL program in 2019. This company hires 300 new technicians annually! The goal is to have every new technician earn an HFL or HFT credential and to encourage existing technicians to do the same. The employer understands that the need to recruit, retain and advance employees is directly tied to academic and professional development career ladders. While there are still a number of details to work out, this - combined with the ASHE support - is the jet fuel for recruiting and developing our profession!

The last item I would like to share with you is something for which I need your support, encouragement and feedback. I am actively discussing workforce development and the possibility of creating a formal apprenticeship program for our profession with the Kentucky Department of Education. The benefits to employers and those entering the profession is significant, but the amount of work and support needed from healthcare facilities, OCTC and you is equally significant. Not only will this put us on the map as a clearly identified profession, it will also give us access to tuition and program development support we will need. I may be asking you to call your state representatives as a show of suppor in the not-too-distant futuret. One of the greatest challenges we have is that while we are critically important to healthcare and patients, we are also very decentralized and invisible to most. If our voice is going to be heard, we are going to have to speak at the same time. Another way of meeting this challenge is growing enrollment in the HFL and future HFT program. Like the other items in this update, there will be more to come!

Best,  

Mike Canales

Healthcare Facilities Leadership Program Director