Bedside Matters

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Acton Educational Services Inc.


Founded:

1978


Core Business:

Health care career

education


Employees in 2006:

350


Employees in 2007:

400


Goal:

Become the pre-eminent private

educator of health care professional and support staff in Southern California

Driving Force: Ability to offer nontraditional students the opportunity to get well-paying health care jobs in great demand


David Pyle has had a dream for more than two decades: providing quality, fast-track training for adults looking to supercharge their health care careers.


Now, the president of West Coast University is seeing that dream turn into reality as his first class of 40 registered nurses graduated this spring.


And by one key measure it has already been a smash success: an unusually high 92 percent of the class passed California’s licensing exam on the first try and most have job offers.


“It’s a very high percentage for new program, and we think it’s because of our approach,” said Pyle. “As a private, for-profit college we serve and listen to our stakeholders our students and the employers who hire them.”


West Coast, a unit of Pyle’s Acton Educational Services Inc., is affiliated with American Career College, an L.A. school that Pyle has headed since 1981 that focuses on providing health care vocational training to students just entering the work place.


By contrast, West Coast targets mid-career adults with a specialized approach intended to get them in and out of school as rapidly as possible. He claims it’s something not currently available in registered nursing and health care administration, the two programs offered.


The downside: It’s very pricey. The registered nursing program, which only accepts students already licensed as vocational nurses, costs $56,000, plus another $4,000 for textbooks and supplies.


Still, the program is already receiving notice given an acute shortage of registered nurses and a lack of training programs both in Southern California and around the nation though given its price tag and modest enrollment its impact can only be limited.


The U.S. Labor Department estimates that the number of nurse openings will jump to 800,000 by 2020 from 110,000 currently. The problem is already particularly acute in California, where hospitals are under a mandate to increase nurse-to-bed staffing ratios. In particular there is a shortage of RNs, who have more authority and autonomy than licensed vocational nurses, who have restrictions on the types of procedures they can perform.


“I think what they’re trying to do is an interesting experiment in offering a niche program, and we need more innovative experiments,” said Marla Salmon, dean of Emory University’s nursing school and former director of the Division of Nursing at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “But it certainly doesn’t replace the need for more nursing training at our lower cost public colleges and universities, where there has been significant underinvestment.”


Shriner’s Hospitals for Children-Los Angeles, which has American Career graduates on staff, is hoping the five-week clinical program it began offering West Coast nursing students earlier this year will serve as an effective recruiting tool.


“The baby boomer nurses are getting older and older, so we really need to work hard to show these students what we can offer them here,” said Director of Nurses Cecilia Barrios, who is actively recruiting the newly minted RNs for the specialty pediatric hospital.



Extensive tutoring

West Coast currently offers an associates degree, and recently received accreditation to offer a bachelor’s degree program The LVN-to-RN program is 18 months long, and Pyle’s goal is to eventually graduate a class of 60 students every 10 weeks.


The program is divided into eight 10-week terms, with 400 hours of clinical rotation at area hospitals during the last three terms.


The university celebrates only a minimum number of holidays and has low tolerance for absenteeism and failures.


Tuition for the concierge-style program includes extensive tutoring, mentoring and test preparation that would cost extra at other schools. There’s assistance with child care and transportation, with plans to offer an online class option for some general education requirements by year’s end to help students juggle their schedules.


The program attracts nursing students with busy lives who have been frustrated by lotteries and waiting lists often required to get into traditional junior college and university programs.


The financial incentive for an LVN to move up the career ladder can be significant. A salary survey last year by the Hospital Association of Southern California indicated that a new RN can earn more than $56,000 a year in base pay, at least $16,000 more than an experienced LVN.


A significant percentage of West Coast students are American Career alumni, such as Annette Lander, a 27-year-old Huntington Park resident who graduated from the LVN program in 2000. A wife and mother, she continues pull shifts at Mission Hospital while taking classes.


“Becoming an LVN enabled us to move out of a trailer and buy a home, and becoming an RN is going to offer me many more professional opportunities,” Lander said.


Pyle, a University of Southern California business school graduate whose first career was in real estate finance, got into the private vocational education business almost by accident. In the late 1970s, his father had invested in the original American Career College, founded as an optical dispensing school. But by 1980, the school was about to file for bankruptcy.


Pyle, who had been serving as a consultant, offered to buy out the partners by assuming the school’s debt. He believed he could apply what he had learned in business world to turn around the school. One technique was regular meetings with employers to get feedback on what new skills students should learn. He continues to be sole proprietor of both schools, relying tuition fees and bank financing to run the programs.


“When I took over in January 1981, we had six employees, less than 25 students and were losing $30,000 a month,” said Pyle, noting that he eventually paid back all of the debt in full.


Pyle and his staff rebuilt the optical program, and in 1990 obtained a Small Business Administration loan to start adding other specialties from health claims examiner to surgical technician. By 1989 the college moved from Wilshire Boulevard to a large office building on Rosewood Avenue.


The opportunity to offer a more academic program came when West Coast University, originally an ophthalmology school, went bankrupt. Pyle bought the assets, changed the school’s focus to nursing and health administration and began offering classes at the American Career College campus.


Today, the two schools have a combined 3,200-student enrollment, with plans to open an Anaheim campus of West Coast and an Ontario campus of American Career. Pyle said he’s also had interest in expanding his model to San Diego and Las Vegas.


“There are those who think you can’t offer a strong academic program for health care professionals outside a traditional university setting,” he said. “But I believe we’re going to prove them wrong over time.”

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