Feasibility of Multi-Stakeholders Shared Service Cooperative in Delivering Rural Home Care

Susan Noble, Executive Director, Vernon County Economic Development Association

Description
This workout session will be led by Susan Noble, Executive Director of the Vernon County Economic Development Association (VEDA). VEDA spent a year working with a vertical network of home care providers to discover potential shared services that could reduce the cost of home care delivery and pool demand for home care workers as strategies to provide quality care in a diminishing resource environment.

For over a year, a group of stakeholders in Vernon County, Wisconsin has met to explore the feasibility of a multi-stakeholder or shared services cooperative as a delivery mechanism for delivering rural home care. The stakeholders represented an “integrated vertical network” and included representatives from a rural hospital and nursing homes; county employees responsible for programs for the elderly and other special needs population groups; Workforce Development and vocational training personnel; care givers and economic development specialists; and government officials.

The purpose of this breakout session is to share the “Discovery Process” used to look at the feasibility of a multi-stakeholder approach for home care delivery; the critical findings and areas for start-up collaboration; and, the challenges, especially in the health care sector. Two key areas of collaboration that emerged: (1) pooling demand for home care workers among current providers to ensure a 35-40 hour work week and help create a sustainable workforce; and, (2) sharing/purchasing current education programs as a way to reduce costs and avoid duplication.

Materials
Presentation (pptx)

Presenter
Susan Noble has eighteen years of experience in asset-based community and economic development and is the founding executive director of Vernon Economic Development Association in western Wisconsin. She is skilled at building collaborations and is dedicated to increasing the quality of life in rural communities. In July 2011 Susan was recognized by the White House as a Rural Champion of Change at a meeting with Secretary Vilsack and President Obama in Washington D.C. In June 2012 she received the Small Business Administration (SBA) Home Based Business Champion Award for Wisconsin and six states in the Midwest region. Susan serves on the Western Technical College Business and Industry Advisory Council, is an advisor to the Fifth Season Cooperative and is a member of Economic Development Professionals, Wisconsin Grant Seekers, the 7 Rivers Alliance, Wisconsin Business Incubator Association and the Wisconsin Economic Development Association.

Noble's experience in community level collaboration includes leadership in successfully bringing together a diverse set of stakeholders around a shared goal of forming a food supply multi-stakeholder cooperative. Lessons learned from that development initiative informed the work done around the goal of exploring the most effective way of addressing the need for a sustainable rural direct care workforce and the challenge of integrating the delivery of home care services into the local and regional rural health care delivery system in Vernon County WI.