2023
INTERNATIONAL
AWARD
Innovations in Diversity
HCA Healthcare Innovation Title: Lighting Pathways: The HCA Healthcare Scholars 365 Program Company Website: www.HCAHealthcare.com Year Introduced: 2021
Executive Summary
H
CA is one of the nation’s leading healthcare providers with 182 hospitals and other centers of care in 20 states and the United Kingdom. Our generous and creative college aid program is dedicated to building a diverse pipeline of healthcare professionals by giving $10 million over three years to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HCBUs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). HCA’s student scholarships, funds for expanding a nursing faculty, student internships and more are helping to ensure that HCA Healthcare Scholars and other healthcare graduates and undergraduates will be part of our country’s robust healthcare system. HCA is trying to address a very urgent problem in medicine. Primary care doctors are in short supply, particularly diverse healthcare providers, and according to the American Association of Colleges
22
2023 Fourth Quarter
of Nursing, the US already has a shortage of registered nurses which is expected to grow as Baby Boomers age and decline. Meanwhile, nursing schools across the country are struggling to find enough professors. HCA is using its history of strategically partnering with organizations, particularly Black and Hispanic colleges, to help build a diverse healthcare workforce. For instance, we have made generous donations to several HBCUs. We recently gave $1.5 million to Fisk University for students seeking nursing degrees; $1.5 million to Tennessee State University for undergraduate and graduate school students seeking careers in healthcare and computer science and $1.5 million to Florida International University’s nursing and health sciences college to help expand its faculty. We also gave $750,000 to The University of Texas at El Paso, the leading Hispanic serving university, to create multiple graduate degree opportunities.
And there’s more. The HCA Healthcare Scholars program selects outstanding undergraduate and graduate students at Tennessee State University, for example, for scholarships, mentors, seminars and career guidance. This is a long term strategy to build a more diverse healthcare workforce by collaborating with institutions that are working hard to educate much needed nurses, researchers, doctors and hospital administrators. And it’s already working. Attendees at a recent HCA Healthcare showcase at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a historically black university, said the scholarships allowed them to focus on their education so that they could successfully complete their classes. In the coming years, we hope these university partnerships will pay off at hospitals and clinics around the country.
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