S.C. health care policy group releases new report

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The South Carolina Institute of Medicine and Public Health has released a report recommending ways to prepare the state’s health and human service providers for changes in health care.

The Evolving Workforce: Redefining Health Care Delivery in South Carolina, developed by the Workforce for Health Taskforce, helps health care providers balance the needs of caring for the community with the needs of employees, IMPH officials said during a news conference last week.

The taskforce was organized by the IMPH to gather input and suggestions from more than 60 representatives from the state’s health care systems, state agencies, consumer groups, community organizations, nonprofits and academia. Their goal was to find ways for health care organizations to help their workforce deal with changes in the industry.

“Today we know the landscape of health care is changing, bringing with it new opportunities to adopt value-based systems of care that address all determinants of health,” Richard Wilkerson, Taskforce co-chair and retired chairman & president of Michelin North America, said in the release. “Members of the health and human services workforce in South Carolina need to be empowered to perform as highly adaptive change-agents, able to evolve with the pace of care delivery innovations and demands.”

The group organized its conclusions into four categories: embracing the evolution of roles in health and human services, training health and human services providers, workforce needs in behavioral health and addressing the evolving workforce.

“This report and the recommendations are the culmination of what began as conversations among stakeholders about how to best prepare the state’s health care workforce in an age of transforming payment models while also focusing on population health beyond clinical care,” said Kester S. Freeman, Taskforce co-chair and executive director of IMPH.

Click here to read the report.

IMPH is an independent, nonprofit organization that provides policy suggestions for improving health and health care in the state.