Bridge the Gap is proud to introduce the newest show on the Network: Certify It, the podcast for advancing your career in care. Hear from Barry Davis, President & CEO at Hillcrest Healthcare Communities and Doug Bryant, Senior Vice President of Learning, Diversity, and Talent at Hillcrest Healthcare, as they discuss how The Mason Center for Healthcare Education aims to educate the future of healthcare by providing courses, education and opportunities.

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Produced by Solinity Marketing

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Intro

Welcome to season seven of Bridge The Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. Powered by sponsors Accushield, Aline, NIC MAP Vision, Procare HR, Sage, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. Produced by Solinity Marketing.

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00:33 

Josh Crisp

Welcome to Bridge the Gap podcast. I'm your host, Josh, and what an exciting episode we have today. I'm actually in a remote location today. For those of you that may be not only listening, but watching this on YouTube or another channel. I'm actually at the Mason Center for Health Care Education with my good friends, and you're going to be hearing a lot about an exciting new show called Certify It.

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And it's here on Bridge the Gap, the podcast network for senior living professionals. And I want to welcome Doug Bryant, Senior Vice President of Learning, Diversity and Talent at Hillcrest Healthcare. Wow, that is a mouthful, Doug. And I know you do a lot of things around here, and that's definitely a title to go with it. And we also have Barry Davis, president and CEO at Hillcrest Health Care. Guys, good friends, known you guys for a long time, and I couldn't be more excited to share with our audience the exciting things going on at Hillcrest and the family of organizations that have surrounded it. Barry, welcome to the show, and thanks for being here today. And if you could just start unpacking what's happening over here and kind of the vision and the mission for the Mason center for Healthcare Education.

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01:53:10 - 02:56

Barry Davis

Well, thanks, Josh. It's great to be with you. And we have worked with you before. Good friends. The vision for the Mason center is very, very exciting for us, and it's evolved as we've gone through this. In the beginning, we thought there was a need for continuing education in the healthcare industry in Knox County. And from there then it became obvious there was a need for certification programs. Also, in things like the medical technician, the new aid program, we were one of the first ones, if not the first in the state to offer that program. And then as we moved further into it, we found there's a real need. We were working with the school systems and specifically Knox County's eight six, five academy, and there's a real need for an entry way into the health care profession for students.

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And so we've been very fortunate to have the ability to work with the school system, talk to the students about careers in health care, and provide them a pathway to enter the healthcare field. So it's the vision I'm sure will continue to evolve as we go, but so far it's been a very exciting path to here.

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02:56 - 03:12

Josh Crisp

Not only are you a large health care provider in the area, but it's so rewarding. I'm sure to be able to meet needs outside of just your general health care system. but this is extended far beyond the reach, of maybe even what you originally thought it would be. Right?

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03:12 - 03:47

Barry Davis

Absolutely. And we specifically have the Mason center as part of our foundation so that we could serve all the other health care providers in the area. We want this to be a standalone entity that provides education, training, certifications to anyone in the healthcare industry. We focus, initially on a lot of the skilled nursing facility careers, but really anything in assisted living, independent living, skilled care, anything that requires some health care experience certification, and some knowledge. We want to educate those people.

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03:47 - 04:13

Josh Crisp

it wasn't that long ago, that you all did a ribbon cutting, for this great educational center. We're actually sitting in this educational center right now. You know, this must have been a long time coming to be able to put all this together from vision to actually getting it to where the doors could open in a freestanding, beautiful campus. Tell us a little bit about that process for you.

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04:13 - 05:07

Barry Davis

Well, like everything else in the healthcare field, Covid, slowed everything down. This is an idea that we had several years ago, based on what we observed in the market as being a need. But Covid really made it difficult to get planning, to get things moving. So we picked up speed as Covid waned some and Doug and his team have done an incredible job of programming. They've done an incredible job of getting the state certifications that we need. And Doug may mention we just got a Tennessee Higher Education Commission certification this past week. So it has been a lot of work, but there's been a lot of support from our board, from the foundation board and the other folks that have taken an interest in this. And I said the school systems have been supportive. Other healthcare entities have sent their staff here for training. So we've gotten a lot of community support.

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05:07 - 05:29

Josh Crisp

I’m curious now, what is it like being able to fill classes and see the students come in? And what's your reach so far? I mean, I know we've heard of communities that we're even sending folks out from Cleveland, Tennessee. So this is broader than just Knoxville proper. It's a regional development. Correct?

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05:29 - 05:58

Barry Davis

Absolutely. And I'll let Doug speak to our target. But we wanted to start locally and then expand into the entire East Tennessee region, if not farther, with some online education. Eventually, we hope to have online coursework where we can serve in anybody with a computer and internet access anywhere. Originally we wanted to help fill the shortage in the Knox County market with, folks in the entry level stages of health care career.

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05:58 - 06:35

Josh Crisp

Doug, we have a lot to talk to you about. You wear a lot of hats. As senior vice president, not only for Hillcrest, but you're also the host of the new podcast where our listeners can join in on the conversation every time you drop a new episode on Certify It, which talks, about all things, getting certified and getting a health care education and things that are happening not only here, but just thought leadership topics at, your offices here. So tell us a little bit about the Mason center and what you guys are doing here, specifically as it relates to programing

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06:35 - 07:34

Doug Bryant

We have CNA classes. We have the medication aid classes we just finished prior to recording today, a CPR certification class for healthcare professionals. Getting ready to start offering Heart Saver through the American Heart Association, which is for just the community in general that may need it. Also have IV skills for LPNs. And that is the programming that we have right now. We have some other programs that we are working on and developing.

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One of the ones that I'm the most excited about is we're working on a CNA class, that's all in Spanish for the Spanish speaking population. Brandi, the executive director of the Mason center, actually has already had conversations with the state, and they're going to offer the test and the skills portion in Spanish. We already reached out to a bilingual instructor that is interested in teaching that class all in their native language.

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07:34 - 07:56

Josh Crisp

Just for a little bit of relevancy to give a background, I've known you, and from the first time I met you years ago, I could always see your excitement anytime we started talking about a team, whether it was recruiting talent, training talent, building culture and communities and facilities. Give our listeners a little bit of your background, Doug, so they understand where you're coming from.

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07:56 - 08:45

Doug Bryant

Well, a little bit of my background is, after I finished high school, I decided I wanted to be a nurse. That got me through the first two years of college. and then I went to do my clinicals and decided, you know what? This touching people and the whole direct cares. Probably not for me. So what do I need to do so that I can stay in health care because I really like the health care knowledge and wanted to serve in that way. But what could I do outside of that and not have thrown away two years worth RN school?

So I went to my counselor and she was like, well, we have accounting. That wasn't really what I was thinking about. so I ended up getting a degree in accounting. and then I went and got my master's in HR. It's an MBA with a concentration in HR. Most recently, my wife tells me I'm a career student. I'm getting ready to finish my doctorate in organizational management and training.

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08:45 - 09:19

Josh Crisp

The background, knowledge and experience you have is so relevant to this topic and to the senior living industry. So what a valuable resource. bridge the gap network. So for our listeners, if you haven't already, you're going to need to subscribe to this show as soon as it's dropping and make sure you're listening and tuning in to all the episodes. So, Barry, and Doug, you know, this must be so rewarding. So much work. behind the vision to make this a reality. What are your goals for this upcoming year for you guys with the Mason center.

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09:19 - 10:30

Doug Bryant

Goals that we have this first year, I guess we'll call it our freshman year since we're talking education is really making sure our programing is shored up, making sure that we get the word out of what we're trying to do. It's very important to us. And the reason we got the THEC authorization and the fact that we even placed it under the Hillcrest Foundation, we're looking for health care partners that we can help. Creating these programs in-house has been something that long term care and senior care has always been able to do. Finding the funds to be able to do it, or the staff to be able to do it has always been a problem. We want to solve that problem for them and partner with people. It can be used as a recruiting tool. It can be used as a retention tool. Of the things that I'm really passionate about is making sure that our nurse leaders get leadership training. We're really good at taking nurses that are really good at being nurses and promoting them into management, and then we don't really teach them how to do that.

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So providing leadership training for managers and in long term care and senior care, even in health care in general, we just want to be the go to place that people send their people to get great education so that East Tennessee can have a really strong health care workforce.

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10:30 - 10:44

Josh Crisp

People that if they want to know how to find out more information about what classes are offered, how they could help support, what are the resources or what would you direct them to? Is it a website?

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10:44 - 11:03

Doug Bryant

We do have a website. themasoncenterknox.com. All of our class schedules are there. Our class catalogs, there's links to all of tha. It tells you a little bit about our instructors and the staff that we have, on site. There's also a phone number on the website that you can just call, and actually a person will answer the phone. We have traditional methods of reaching us as well.

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11:03 - 11:52

Josh Crisp

As we start to wrap up the show, you know, I think it would be really important, for you all to also say, you know, I know it it's it's a huge cost burden to do something like this and to stand up something like this that serves, you know, not only Knoxville, but this is actually serving a region, I think potentially with the online reach, it could serve, internationally and nationally the needs. And it's so exciting to hear even the bilingual opportunities that you've got. But Hillcrest Foundation, that's something that seems to be like a vital point of everything that you're doing at Hillcrest Health Care. Very, talk to us just a little bit about the important work of that and how that enables you all to be such a leader in providing these valuable services to Knoxville and surrounding areas.

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11:52 - 12:38

Barry Davis

The foundation is a really critical part of this effort because, as you said, there is a lot of cost and a start up, but we also want to be able to serve the students who may not be able to afford the classes themselves or may not have an employer to pay for them. So what we did when we started was through the contribution from Hillcrest Health Care and several individuals in the area. We started with a $250,000 endowment for the Mason center, and we hope that we're going to start a campaign to raise funds for that, later this year, early next year. And the idea is that we can provide scholarships and provide assistance to students who may not be able to afford the programs on their own.

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12:38 - 13:50

Josh Crisp

What an awesome thing to get behind the Hillcrest family as I like to refer to it. And the Hillcrest Foundation. I know you've got golf tournaments coming up, and there's all kinds of ways that you can get involved, even in fun ways to help support all the great work of Hillcrest.

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I couldn't be more excited, for our audience to get Certify It, the new podcast dropping on Bridge the Gap Network, the network for senior living and health care professionals in our industry. Barry and Doug, really appreciate your time today and helping kick off this exciting new show. For our listeners, be sure that you have subscribed and this episode, when you're finished listening to it, go to our show notes at BTGvoice.com.

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You can find everything you need to know about our partners here. You can learn about the Certify It podcast as well as Hillcrest, their whole family of companies delivering amazing services here in East Tennessee and in the region. You're going to need to know about it. Make sure you share and thank you for listening to another great episode of Bridge the Gap.

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Outro

Thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at BTGvoice.com.

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