Identifying healthcare needs and gaps and how various organizations can come together to solve those issues was the focus of Building the Basin, a Permian Basin Healthcare Workforce Summit Tuesday at the Odessa Marriott and Conference Center.
Moderated by Midland Development Corporation Executive Director Sara Harris, it featured a variety of panels, including one on healthcare recruitment and retention.
The recruitment and retention panel included officials from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, the City of Odessa and Midland and executives from UTPB, Medical Center and Midland Memorial hospitals and Permian Regional Medical Center in Andrews.
Midland Memorial President and Chief Executive Officer Russell Meyers said many people who work at the hospital are married to or connected with someone who works in oil.
“If we can, we do our best to make it an appealing place …,” Meyers said. “It’s amazing how often people who have left us for what they thought were greener pastures are anxious to come back, because we have created positive working environments and a really good supportive community that they don’t necessarily find in a city of 4 million somewhere else. So emphasizing those things with people and trying to convince them to stay is a big part of what we do,” Meyers said.
He added that it’s important to keep building a pipeline of people who are here. Meyers said they have made “huge investments in training fledgling nurses” and others who go to school here and graduate. They come to the hospital and still need significant amounts of specialty training.
“… We do invest a lot of resources in making their professional experience the best it can be so they will stay. The downside of that, of course, is it makes them really attractive to those guys in Houston and Dallas and other places that didn’t have to pay to train them. But we keep doing it anyway because we know we have to keep the pipeline going,” Meyers said.
Permian Regional Medical Center Chief Executive Officer Donny Booth said they have found that people who were raised in this area are going to stay “because they know what they’ve got here.”
“It’s an amazing community. The Permian Basin is second to none, in my opinion. I was born and raised, basically here in the Permian Basin. But again, we see the same thing. They go. They leave for greener pastures and sure enough, they turn around and come right back because they realize that those big metropolitan areas just can’t lay a finger on the Permian Basin,” Booth said.
Asked what can be done to emphasize the strength of the Permian Basin, Midland Mayor Patrick Payton said when he first moved to Midland, there were 99,000 people.
“I used to refer to this place as Mayberry on speed. … But generational changes take place about every 18 to 20 years. … The other thing I was saying back in the early 2000s and then around (2008, 2009 and 2010), we started seeing fracking take off. The industry was turning from a mining industry to a manufacturing industry. So our whole Basin has been fundamentally changing, while at the same time getting younger. And as harsh as this might sound, I think the biggest impediment to recruiting people is we’re going have to grow up and act like a big city,” Payton said.
“We did some research back in the early 2000s about what’s the number where a community becomes no longer just dependent on an industry. In other words, it … can sustain itself with other industries. The number was 150,000, so now if you look at Midland and even look at Odessa combined, we’re about 300,000. That’s round numbers, but you’re 150,000 a piece,” Payton said.
At some point, people have to decide to grow up, invest up and “own who we are,” Payton said.
“… We can bring them out here as long as we want; let them look at sunsets and sunrises and say how beautiful this is. But until we start owning the fact that we’re an outdoor community. We can do outdoor life … We’re going to build parks and we’re going to build trails for people to walk on and to ride on and all these different things until we turn that corner and realize we’re getting younger, we’re not getting older and it’s going to be a political fight …,” Payton added.
Odessa City Manager Michael Marrero noted that the city has put a lot of money “in terms of infrastructure, in terms of investments in new facilities.”
“We took a step and we worked with a partner to build this great facility,” Marrero said referring to the Marriott. “I think that all adds to the quality of life. …”
Revitalizing downtown is not only meant to reinvest and redevelop it, but as a tool to recruit and retain people.
Booth said telemedicine and telehealth became vital during the pandemic, especially in rural communities where they struggled many times to get their patients to larger healthcare facilities.
“We were kind of forced into the tele-healthcare/technology role to be able to continue to provide quality care for these individuals. So I think in the future from what we’ve learned from the COVID pandemic, telehealth is going to become vital, especially in rural communities in the Permian Basin as we continue to move forward with this health care model,” Booth said.
Officials agreed that technology is playing a large role in healthcare now, especially during the pandemic.
Medical Center Hospital President/CEO Russell Tippin said the hospital has a robot dietitian in the hospital because dietitians are hard to come by.
Dr. Timothy Benton, regional dean and professor at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in Odessa, said the healthcare system is incredibly complex and everyone must collaborate across the communities.
An audience member asked about the mega-hospital that has been discussed between Odessa and Midland. The speaker was concerned with the impact on rural hospitals and Medical Center.
Booth said reducing the number of beds in rural facilities would not make sense.
Meyers said MMH has been involved in the mega-hospital planning effort to varying degrees over time.
“… My perspective is that it’s well-intentioned. I think you heard earlier some conversation about the need for easier access to specialists (and) for a dramatically improved trauma system across the region. I think those things are worthy goals; worthy objectives, and exactly how they’ll get realized over time I think is still to be determined. But I do think that from my perspective, the people who’ve been driving that conversation are vitally interested in making health care better for the region,” Meyers said.
“There’s a good bit of self-interest to that. And clearly you know that the energy industry is only going to prosper and grow, if it can build its workforce and bring people here and get them to stay here and realize the vision that Mayor Payton talked about; taking that next generational step to making this a destination … We’ve got to step forward and do more in order to attract and retain those people. I think it’s motivated in the right way, whether it’s the mechanism that will create it as a single medical center, maybe even a new medical school … I think remains to be determined. We’ll stay at the table of influence as best we can,” Meyers said.
Benton said the first interest is the patient, patient needs and keeping what’s in place now, but meeting the needs of the future.
Tippin said they need all manner of healthcare workers whether it’s lab techs, housekeepers, kitchen workers, or doctors.
“… You can never have enough and I think that’s one thing that pandemic taught us is just when you think you have enough, you need five more,” Tippin said.
He said he would like to add subspecialities and are always working to do so. They listen what people want, what they travel for, and if they’re thinking of traveling, whether that service already here and they don’t know about it.
Texas Tech Assistant Vice President for External Relations Jessica Zuniga said the idea for the summit came from TTUHSC President Dr. Laurie Rice-Spearman.
The aim was to bring the community together and offer insight on what the future holds for healthcare.
This is the first time TTUHSC has hosted something like this.
Benton said he thought the summit was incredibly useful.
“… The complexity of the healthcare system is really enormous. I don’t think that there is any one entity that can meet that complexity to serve our people. We have to partner; we have to collaborate … ,” Benton said.
Cutline1
Midland Mayor Patrick Payton talks about the growth of the Permian Basin and how the area has to own its growth and change during a panel discussion on healthcare recruitment and retention Tuesday at the Odessa Marriott and Conference Center. (Ruth Campbell | Odessa American)
Headline1
Meeting health gaps summit topic
