Direct Care Careers Center, A Multi-Purpose State Workforce Management Tool

April 10, 2023

Overview

States continue to struggle with the sizable difference between the number of individuals who qualify for Medicaid-financed long-term services and supports (LTSS) and the direct service care workers available to provide this essential care. Workforce shortages further hinder a state’s ability to rebalance its Medicaid population—by either transitioning individuals from nursing homes and assisted living facilities or prolonging their residence in the community—through the provision of essential home and community-based services (HCBS). While there are several solutions being proposed to states to support enhancing recruitment, retention, and development strategies, these strategies are limited in their ability to understand real-time gaps and needs.

Altarum has partnered with ADvancing States to develop a platform that addresses constraints in existing solutions. The comprehensive Direct Care Careers Center provides everything states need in a single workforce management tool—training and professional development resources, credentialing, job matching, peer support, and meaningful real-time data to guide planning and policymaking.
 

Approach

The Direct Care Careers Center is a comprehensive workforce management platform that increases the state’s ability to: 

• Capture employees’ certifications and credentials, experience, work preferences and availability—enabling states and managed care organizations (MCOs) to better understand the workforce and gaps in care
• Streamline the recruitment process between providers, individuals who direct their own care, and potential workers through job post and auto match functions
• Enable access to training and professional development resources, including required state certification training(s) through the learning platform
• Increase peer-to-peer support amongst workers through a collaboration forum
• Better manage the workforce and inform state workforce priorities through real-time data analytics and workforce dashboards

Over the past decade, Altarum has gained extensive expertise in building and maintaining online resource centers and virtual training centers for clients such as CMS and HRSA. As technical lead, we’ve designed the Direct Care Careers Center using an open-source content management system that allows extensive customization for different audiences and devices to meet state, employer, and worker needs.

States have the flexibility to enable or disable features based on their requirements, or population of interest. These features include tools for job postings, automatic match generation and advanced search capabilities for job seekers, easy online job applications, training modules, discussion forums, the ability to manage credentialing and licensure, and a talent bank of direct care workers.