Quarter-billion-dollar grant could turn SETX into health care hub

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  • Assistant Secretary Dennis Alford asks questions about the :SCPA-led proposal during a visit to Port Arthur April 22
    Assistant Secretary Dennis Alford asks questions about the :SCPA-led proposal during a visit to Port Arthur April 22
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Precipitating a potential estimated $260 million health care investment that would establish a wider, more efficient nursing pipeline from local colleges straight into Southeast Texas hospitals, the United States Administration of Economic Development (EDA) selected a coalition of Lamar institutions and local hospitals as a finalist for its “Build Back Better” grant competition.

The Build Back Better Regional Challenge Grant represents the largest grant competition ever hosted by the EDA, according to EDA Assistant Secretary Dennis Alvord, who traveled to the Port Arthur campus April 22 to congratulate the area on its finalist status and note feedback on the process. He also insisted that his presence shouldn’t be taken as a sign the EDA will select the region for funding.

Afforded by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, $1 billion dollars from this fund was allotted to the Build Back Better Regional Challenge Grant to make awards of up to $100 million to address regional problems and to create economic growth.

The grant competition asked applicants to define their own geographic region in need, identify an industry within that area negatively impacted by COVID, then formulate a blueprint for how federal funding will help that particular workforce – not just revert to its pre-pandemic prosperity, but “Build Back Better.”

“That’s what the whole of the United States started on. There were 529 applications, everybody with a totally different region and a totally different idea,” said Ben Stafford, vice president of Workforce Development and Continuing Education at Lamar State College Port Arthur (LSCPA). “There were 35 in Texas – it was the single most active state in applying. From Texas, two finalists were chosen.”

Led by LSCPA, members of the coalition include Lamar University, Lamar State College Orange, the Deep East Texas College and Career Academy, CHRISTUS Southeast Texas Health Systems, Baptist Hospital of Southeast Texas, The Southeast Texas Medical Center and Riceland Health Services. The coalition includes every provider or nursing educator and every major medical facility within a 5,000-square-mile region of urban and rural Texas.

The coalition proposed to address the “devastating” nursing shortage in Southeast and Deep East Texas by increasing program capacity among the colleges that offer nursing and pre-nursing training and by increasing clinical space for nurses at not-for-profit hospitals.  For-profit hospital partners will agree to make more nursing placements available and to open facilities not historically used for nursing clinical training.

‘People are dying’

In an exclusive interview with The Examiner, Stafford said he believes their straightforward proposal has a strong chance of being selected for funding.

“You can’t be at a college or a hospital right now and not realize the simply desperate situation health care is in in our region. Literally, people are dying,” Stafford said. “At any given time, hospitals in Southeast Texas run about 10% understaffed and we spend about $100,000 a month per facility on traveling nurses. That’s caused by Houston being such an enormous vacuum to the students we turn out. They can go there and make more money and still be close to home.”

During the pandemic, urban hospitals have gone from 10% understaffed to 25 and 30% below minimum staffing, Stafford described, adding, “That’s why people wait in the halls – they can’t open the units because they can’t get nurses to staff the units according to code. So, you go to the ER, and they put you on a bed in the hallway and tell you, ‘We’re waiting on a room to open.’ And they are; they’re waiting on a room to open. But without nurses, you can’t have those rooms open.”

The Lamar institutions have been too small for decades, according to the grant proposal, resulting in the schools turning down up to 28% of qualified nursing applicants due to a lack of space. LSPCA’s LVN program regularly admits up to 100 nursing students per year into its curriculum, meaning approximately 38 qualified students are rejected each year, Stafford shared, while LU’s BSN program rejects as many as 60 students for every 100 admitted.

“There is no shortage of Texans wanting to become nurses,” said Dr. Cindy Zolnierek, CEO of the Texas Nurses Association. “Up to 40% of qualified applicants are turned away every year. Addressing the shortage of clinical space by providing a strong infrastructure through committed academic-practice partnerships promises a lasting solution to a real and significant problem.”