As the demand for healthcare services continues to rise, TXST’s Continuing Education Office has partnered with MedCerts to offer seven healthcare online programs for non-traditional students.
According to the Texas Hospital Association, 40% of Texas counties’ primary care health needs are not being met.
MedCerts, a national online medical training company, provides over 55 online healthcare training programs ranging from healthcare to IT professional development careers, with some programs equaling up to 17 college credits.
Under the TXST partnership, students can apply to one of seven healthcare certification training programs including: electronic health records and reimbursement specialist, medical assistant, professional coder, medical front office and electronic health records, medication care coordinator, pharmacy technician professional and medical front office assistant and administration specialist.
Jorge Lopez, director for continuing education, said the partnership would offer flexible and affordable online healthcare programs compared to traditional healthcare training programs.
“They’re [MedCerts Programs] well priced in the field for those types of courses, and also they offer career service assistance as well as student mentoring to make sure the students do well in the courses that they’re taking with MedCerts,” Lopez said.
The partnership aims to help better prepare non-traditional students and adult learners going into the job market in an easy way, according to Lopez.
“We have students who don’t want to go to college right now and training can help [students] get a career started, entry level career,” Lopez said. “Once they get exposed to the working environment their career, they can go into their bachelor’s, master’s and doctorates degrees with the university.”
In October 2020, Kayla Mack, a now certified pharmacy technician and MedCerts Ambassador, took a MedCerts program in hopes of aiding her struggle with finding a degree that interests her and working other jobs.
Mack said the program was easy to use and found she could build the program to fit her work schedule and personal life.
“I made sure, once I was getting off work, I would do maybe two to three hours [of MedCerts lessons], so I wouldn’t fall behind or lose track of where I was, so I just made sure I set up like a schedule that worked for me, which you’re able to do,” Mack said.
MedCerts programs allow students up to 3-6 months to complete, totaling around 16 to 20 hours a week of coursework.
After finishing the physical technician program, Mack said she felt motivated to go back to university and encouraged students to do their own research before applying.
“I think from there, if you feel like that’d be like a good choice for you, then I would say, go with it, but overall, I had a pretty good experience with everything and it’s really not a hard process to get started,” Mack said.
Lopez said the partnership offered programs are specifically curated to what the healthcare industry dictates as being most needed in the New Braunfels, San Marcos, Kyle, Buda and Austin regions.
According to the Texas Workforce Commission, healthcare and social assistance is one of the dominant industries for employment in Texas, with the employment growth expected to exceed 1.9 million by 2032, an increase of over 290,000 jobs compared to 2022.
“Certain occupations in the healthcare industry are still struggling to meet demand. Registered nurses, for example, still have shortages of available employees to meet current demand in the workforce,” the Texas Workforce Commission report stated.
With open enrollment for the MedCerts partnership now available, the Continuing Education Office plans to further expand the online programs offered and aims to meet the needs of TXST’s non-traditional learners.
“We’re always trying to expand and grow our inventory of courses, whether it be with our partners or own courses internally; it just depends what the needs of the industry are in the region,” Lopez said.
The MedCerts partnership will not be impacted by the current National Institutes of Health funding cuts.
