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January 19, 2022

Hartford HealthCare promises $5M for workforce training in partnership with Quinnipiac Univ.

PHOTO | Courtesy Hartford Health Care Quinnipiac University President Judy Olian and Hartford HealthCare President and CEO Jeff Flaks sign a partnership agreement on Jan. 19, 2022.
By Liese Klein

Hartford HealthCare and Quinnipiac University announced a new partnership Wednesday to bolster training of the healthcare workforce with new programs and funding.

“We are thrilled to partner with a leading institute like Quinnipiac University to educate and prepare the next generation of healthcare workers,” said HHC President Jeff Flaks at an event at the university’s medical campus in North Haven. 

HHC will spend $5 million over the next five years to create “training and educational vehicles for colleges to build an essential pipeline to many rewarding careers,” Flaks said. 

After implementation, Quinnipiac students will be able to train in HHC-designed academic programs, serve clinical rotations at HHC facilities and then transition into job openings at the health system. The collaboration will allow the health system and university to address critical shortfalls in the numbers of nurses, doctors and other professionals needed in healthcare in Connecticut and beyond, officials said.

“We’re going to use all of our collective resources to train more people, faster... to meet these critical anticipated workforce shortages,” Flaks said. “We’re going to do great things together.” 

Quinnipiac President Judy Olian said, “It’s a partnership that will greatly expand experiential learning and open up a host of new job opportunities for our students across all disciplines beyond just healthcare.”

In addition to clinical rotations in medical settings, the health system plans to offer on-the-job internships and experience to Quinnipiac students in the fields of supply-chain management and logistics, computing, data analytics, biomedical engineering, accounting and finance, and marketing and communications, Olian said.

Flaks and others stressed that Quinnipiac's decision to house its schools of medicine, nursing and health in one North Haven facility and train students together uniquely qualified the university to prepare next-generation healthcare workers.

“That's the future of healthcare,” Flaks said. “It's innovative partnerships like this that will make us truly better as we go forward.”

As another facet of the deal, Quinnipiac will contract with HHC’s Campus Care program to provide healthcare to students and staff. 

Quinnipiac saw a surge in demand for on-campus health services from its 9,000 students even before the pandemic, Olian said. HHC’s new services will be phased in over the summer and based at the university’s new 60,000-square-foot recreation and wellness center currently under construction at its main campus in Hamden. 

Flaks said that the $5 million HHC has committed will initially go toward building simulation facilities at the university and funding efforts to diversify the healthcare workforce. A priority in the first round of funding will be scholarships to students from underrepresented groups, he said.

Other initiatives include a new training program for HHC executives at Quinnipiac’s business school and new professional development programs at the university for the health system’s 33,000 workers and their dependents. 

Olian said the university will maintain clinical partnerships with other hospitals and systems including Gaylord Specialty Healthcare, Griffin Hospital, Middlesex Hospital, ProHealth Physicians and Waterbury Hospital.

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