Together with ShiftMed, the National Association of Health Care Assistants (NAHCA) is launching a new training platform that will give nursing providers a new outlet for recruitment, certification, job placement, continuing education and ongoing career support all in one place.

The platform, dubbed the National Institute for CNA Excellence or NICE, includes a learning management system that will educate sorely needed new recruits on what it’s like to work in health care.

From 2019 to 2029, there will be an estimated 7.4 million direct care openings, according to a report released by PHI National, a New York City-based policy research and advocacy organization.

The nursing assistant workforce is expected to have 561,800 total job openings during that time frame.

Lori Porter, co-founder and CEO of NAHCA, doesn’t believe there’s a shortage of people who want to become CNAs; rather the individuals working in these low-level, low paying jobs have been undervalued, undervalued and ignored for too long. She thinks the platform will provide staff with a much clearer path as to what their career in health care might look like.

“This will provide them with a better training certification program that’s ever been available on the marketplace,” she told Skilled Nursing News.

The platform will pilot in Texas first before expanding to the rest of the country.

“Every day, the leadership in nursing homes across Texas are struggling to find solutions to a direct care staffing crisis being faced today, like nothing we’ve seen before,” Kevin Warren, president and CEO of the Texas Health Care Association, said in a news release announcing the platform.

NICE has already inked a deal with Senior Living Properties, LLC, a 50-location provider across the state of Texas, as the initial launch partner in the state.

“Having access to more CNAs through this partnership will be a much-needed respite,” Senior Living Properties CEO Cassie Mistretta said in the news release. “This is the biggest challenge that we are facing, and I’m filled with hope of finally having a solution.”

Porter said compared to Minnesota’s initiative to recruit, train and deploy 1,000 CNAs by the end of January – which at the time she described as a good first step – the training platform could serve as a long-term solution for the staffing crunch the industry currently faces.

“You can certify 1,000 people but they will not stay because they’re not prepared,” she said. “This is kind of a turnkey platform uniting all the players. I’ve brought industry experts and leaders to be the faculty and we’ll have analytics around how long a graduate stays with a facility. CNAs need a more informed preparation to enter long-term care.”

Porter described Texas as the program’s “training wheels” to work out the kinks before expanding.

After announcing in Texas last week, Porter has seen around 150 facilities in the state apply to become employer partners.

There’s no cost to be an employer partner with NICE until the facility hires a graduate in the program. Employers will pay $3,000 per hired graduate.

Porter admitted that while the platform was designed to be a national program, getting the approval needed has proven to be more of a challenge.

“The current antiquated regulations stand in our way,” she said. “At the current time, unless we apply to CMS for some type of national waiver, we have to go through this state- by- state approval process, which is laborious, because it’s not really equipped for online platforms. Everything is based on bricks and mortar schools.”

For example, in Texas, one of the requirements to be a nurse aide training and evaluation program is there must be a physical address associated with the program.

“The virtual cloud has no physical address so it was like trying to put a square peg in a round hole,” Porter said.

Through NICE, CNAs will have access to highly qualified instructors, including post-acute and long-term care physicians, aging services policy leaders, and luminaries on topics that include Alzheimer’s disease, person-centered care, infection prevention and control, palliative care, survey and certification and relevant federal regulations.

With ShiftMed as a partner, NICE will have access to a database of health care professionals that will help create a “purpose-driven career pathway” for personal care aides that aren’t certified.

After completing their online education through NICE, CNAs will be able to download the ShiftMed mobile app to be matched with nearby health care employers.