Healthcare Workforce Task Force Meeting by Webinar

February 22, 2010

Meeting Minutes

Webinar Participants:  Ellen Andrews, Co-chair; David Henderson, Co-chair; David Gasior; Kristin Sullivan; Tanya Court; Carol Dingeldey; Sal Luciano; Alice Pritchard; Pat Carroll;  Linda Perfetto; Alexis Fedorjaczenko; Jettie Eddelman

Ellen Andrews opened the meeting by welcoming Task Force members.  Today’s webinar includes presentations from Tanya Court of the Business Council of Fairfield and Alice Pritchard from CT Allied Health Workforce Policy Board.

Tanya Court gave the following presentation.

http://www.cthealthpolicy.org/webinars/20100222_tcourt_workforce.pdf

Alice Pritchard gave the following presentation.

http://www.cthealthpolicy.org/webinars/20100222_apritchard_workforce.pdf

Sal Luciano commented on the Governor’s recent closing of the Pathway for Nurses programs in the technical schools, and asked if she should be urged to keep this program open.  Pat Carroll asked a similar question, wanting to know where today’s presenters stood on the closing of LPN programs.

Alice replied that the LPN programs at tech schools have been closed, and that they have not yet been restored.  There are two bills pending legislation regarding reopening the programs.  There is a need for LPNs in CT, and Alice said that she believes that the programs need to be restored, but perhaps on a smaller scale. 

Tanya said that students who graduated as LPNs were qualified to enter the second year of an RN program, so this program had provided a good pathway for those wishing to advance their educations.  Alice said that technical high schools had just completed a process with community colleges and Charter Oak State College that assessed curriculums and updated them to match up with community colleges.  She said that there had already been so much work done that it was a shame to lose the program completely.

Meeting was adjourned.  Next meeting will be a webinar on 2/25/10 at 3:00 pm.