Western New Mexico University wants to create a pipeline of programs with a rural healthcare focus to try to address the medical provider shortage in the state.
Kimberly Petrovic, associate dean of WNMU’s School of Nursing and Kinesiology, and Victor Stephen Gonzales Jr., Healthcare Workforce Programs director for WNMU, presented to the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee on Monday. The HHSC met on WNMU’s campus in Silver City.
Petrovic and Gonzales gave an overview of the programs offered by WNMU, how the school recruits from some local high schools and what the programs the school hopes to create in the future. They made a request for $400,000 for workforce development training, which would include new equipment and $250,000 to help start a program through WNMU’s Kinesiology: Institute of Health and Human Performance, which could begin students on a path to a physical therapy career.
Gonzales said WNMU already offers three programs, enabling students to receive training as a certified nursing assistant, phlebotomy technician certificate and a new pharmacy technician certificate program, which is fully online and started this fall. He said WNMU wants to expand further by creating a medical assistant program, a medical billing and coding program and an emergency medical technician program. Gonzales said the medical billing and coding program is part of a three-to-five year plan but that the emergency medical technician program might be up and running by next year.
“There’s a really high demand in our area,” he said.
Gonzales and Petrovich also spoke of the new John Arthur and Janette Smith Educational Center in Deming, which held a ribbon cutting ceremony this past summer. It will hold medical training programs for WNMU’s extended learning program in Deming. The center was named for former state Sen. John Arthur Smith and his wife, who live in Deming. Smith is credited for helping to secure the $10.7 million needed to build the building while he was still in office in 2019 and 2020. His wife, Janette, was a school teacher.
Petrovich said the Smith Center in Deming needs security officers so that students and staff feel safe. She cited an active shooter situation that took place briefly in Silver City in August which happened on a street near WNMU’s campus and, out of an abundance of caution, caused the campus to close down in response. Police apprehended the shooter and one woman was injured, according to the Silver City Daily Press.
Petrovich said that as more students become trained, schools will need more medical professionals who have the education requirements to teach these programs. She said the program offers financial incentives to highly achieving students “to stay here and work as educators and other positions.”
State Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero, D-Albuquerque, asked if the students in the training program receive training in Spanish, to encourage Spanish speaking students to enroll. Gonzalez said the new director of the program at the Smith Center in Deming is bilingual and this is more possible now than it was.
State Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, said the school should have made the financial request sooner to be included in this year’s state budget. He said the Legislative Finance Committee is working out the budget details now in committee.
But state Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, D-Santa Fe, said that when the LFC’s budget is heard in the House Appropriations Committee during the upcoming session, additions “for something like this” can be added into the state budget.
“I’m offering a little hope here,” she said.
