Optum Philippines reinforces continuing education programs as country faces nursing crunch

Darwin Mariano, Vice President, External Affairs, Optum Global Solutions Dr. Gloria Yang, Governor, NCR Zone 1, Philippine Nurses Association Christine Dugay, Principal, IPSOS Strategy3 Dr. Kenneth Hartigan-Go, Senior Research Fellow, Ateneo Policy Center, School of Government, Ateneo De Manila University

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Optum Philippines, a leading technology and data-enabled care delivery company, has launched a series of programs aimed to help address the “Nursing Crunch”, a term that pertains to the shortage of nurses in the health care workforce.

According to the Department of Health, it would take roughly 12 years to fill the shortage among nurses and a longer period of 23 years for doctors. While recent policies have been set to address the Nursing Crunch and develop the local health care sector, Filipino nurses will be at a disadvantage if stakeholders and institutions fail to keep up with the demands and changes of the industry.

“The Nursing Crunch poses a significant challenge to the global health care system, straining resources and impacting patient care,” said Ivic Mueco, Managing Director, Optum Philippines. “We are committed to being part of the solution by investing in developing and supporting the Filipino nursing workforce. Through comprehensive training programs made available to all and for our employees, competitive benefits, and a culture of growth and excellence, we aim to empower nurses to thrive in their careers and deliver the highest quality of care to our communities.”

At the Solving the Nursing Crunch C-Suite Forum hosted by Optum Philippines in partnership with the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), Christine Dugay, Senior Engagement Manager of IpsosStrategy3, talked about how the Philippines is experiencing a nursing shortage despite being one of the world’s top providers. 

According to a study conducted by IpsosStrategy3 in the first half 2024, while the Philippines has 526,331 licensed nurses, a majority do not continue to practice and cannot find suitable job opportunities that match their skill set. Two years prior, the Philippine Government announced that the country lacked over 100,000 nurses for public and private health facilities nationwide, resulting in a nurse-to-patient ratio greater than the Department of Health standard of 1:12. 

One of the factors discussed at the forum was the dropout rate of nursing students driven by financial difficulties and program incompatibility. While stress is a common factor among students, financial challenges proved to be the primary reason for public school nursing students to drop out. With this, previously aspiring nurses tend to shift to other non-licensure fields. 

Republic Act No. 10912, or the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Act of 2016 was implemented to ensure the continuous improvement of Filipino professionals to keep them up to date with the latest advancements in their field, ensure that the quality of patient care is at par with global standards, and keep updated about the new technologies and trends in the industry. The challenge remains that they are often too busy fighting the demands across hospitals in the country as the requirement necessitates attending conferences and lectures outside of their current work or studies with courses costing up to thousands of pesos to complete the full 45-unit requirement every three years. 

To help ease this burden on nurses, Optum Philippines initiated the RN Ready Plus program to provide participants with free, self-paced classes to help improve clinical domain knowledge. With the program, nurses are provided support to fulfill the requirements for R.A 10912. 

The program aims to provide participants with easy access to additional clinical educational courses and materials that can be used by nurses, nursing graduates, and nursing students to further their knowledge in the field.

To expand the initiative further is the recently launched Optum Health Education Global online learning platform, designed to help strengthen the global health care workforce by sharing Optum expertise and providing interprofessional continuing education (IPCE). 

Through the program, Optum hopes to maximize its resources by making them available to partner schools, training centers, and health care facilities, to improve the quality of local clinical education, upskilling health care practitioners to become globally competent, and ultimately to reduce the costs of keeping clinical professional licenses by providing free, regularly updated, and accredited courses to increase talent sustainability, retention, and employment. 

“While there is still a long way to go in terms of addressing all the challenges of the industry today –such as program incompatibility and the need for improvement of health care workers’ working conditions, small steps, even those beginning from our innermost circles, are still steps towards a better and brighter future of health and health care,” Mueco said.

“By empowering our nurses with new knowledge and reigniting a love for the lifelong learning that comes with nursing, we are hopeful we can further close the gap,” she concluded.