Over four million people use Medicaid home and community-based services (HBCS) to maintain their dignity, lifestyles, and health. However, acute labor shortages, rising demand from an aging population, and tight state budgets make it difficult for recipients or agencies to locate the right care provider. Most states struggle with the sizable difference between the numbers of individuals who qualify for Medicaid-financed long-term services and supports (LTSS) and the direct service care workers available to perform it. Worse, the pandemic exacerbated direct care workforce staffing shortages. To help provide relevant solutions to our state partners, Altarum partnered with ADvancing States to provide a flexible online “one stop shop” platform to meet the specific needs of LTSS stakeholders—states, care providers, and care recipients.
The platform, DirectCareCareers.com, serves as a broader direct care career workforce management tool. We work with states to configure the platform to meet their specific needs.
Depending on the preferences of the state, the platform:
- Provides a centralized location for individuals receiving services (consumers) and agencies providing services to post open job positions
- Delivers automated, real-time, job candidate to job description matching for employers and candidates
- Allows candidates to create a profile highlighting their skills, experience, job preferences, certifications, and credentials
- Acts as a credentialing system of record as well as a tracking database for the workforce
- Serves as an HCBS workforce knowledge center for states to post policies, initiatives, trainings, and other relevant information
- Enables direct communications to the workforce and workforce employers
- Supplies a centralized learning management system to add, manage, mandate, or recommend workforce trainings
- Furnishes registry insights about the demand for direct care providers and the people who are filling that need across the state
- Offers bi-directional communication between candidates and potential employers to streamline the recruitment and employment process
In the past year, Altarum has launched configured platforms for Texas and Colorado, and is on target to go live with North Dakota. The platform allows organizations with state contracts to view a registry of all approved LTSS providers, including their location, services, rates, and availability.
“The DCC was specifically designed to address the needs of the LTSS industry by the experts at Altarum and ADvancing States who know the ins and outs of the home and community-based services industry and its current needs,” Krissy Azeem, Senior Director, Delivery System Transformation at Altarum. “Our platform was developed to be flexible for both our state partners and managed care organizations who want to better engage their provider partners and streamline supports for their self-directing beneficiaries.”
The platform is a collaborative site where employees can connect and access job postings without having to apply for positions in multiple different places—a central hub for provider agencies and employers who can compare apples to apples. The standardized data entry form for applicants allows states and hiring agencies to study the workforce and identify caregivers with specific skills, job specifications, and credentials.
“Our goal is to have direct care workers and employers say, ‘This is where I want my information because it’s going to give me the best opportunity to connect and either hire or be hired in this industry,’” Katie Schmit, Project Manager, Delivery System Transformation at Altarum, explained.