The San Antonio Report and San Antonio Woman Magazine have partnered to create a series of three in-depth articles looking at the STEM ecosystem in San Antonio.
This is the second article in that series, examining SA Ready to Work, a city program aimed at training thousands of workers for highly skilled careers with better pay. Read part one here and part three here.
Dr. Lyssa Ochoa has a vision, but she needs help.
Sitting for a brief moment of calm in her office at the San Antonio Vascular and Endovascular Clinic (SAVE), she explains the issue she’s trying to address by pulling up two maps on her computer.
The first map shows the current concentration of diabetic amputations in San Antonio. The second map shows the areas of the city that were redlined in the 1930s.
The overlap is almost total.
What the maps illustrate, Ochoa said, is that health is about more than individual choices, it’s about the conditions in which people are born, live, work and age.
Ochoa had a front-row seat to the city’s glaring health inequities in the years she worked at a large medical practice. It compelled her to split off and form a clinic of her own, offering comprehensive vascular care to the city’s most underserved and diabetes-prone communities.
The four locations she first opened in 2018 have now become eight, and she’s looking to grow its number of doctors — maybe even one day open similar vascular clinics and surgery centers on the near East and West sides of town. Ochoa’s Mission Surgery Center, which adjoins the SAVE Clinic, is the only surgery center south of downtown.
But to do any of that, or even just to fill out her existing operation, she needs staff. Nurses and medical assistants. Ultrasound technologists and billing personnel. Competition for these applicants has always been fierce, and only more so under the pandemic. Workforce Solutions Alamo reports that jobs related to STEM — short for science, technology, engineering and math — are sought by local employers more than any other career path they measure.
Ochoa doesn’t want just anyone with a certificate, though. She wants someone who is motivated to learn, someone who understands the importance of that redlining map, someone who, with that knowledge, will go to great lengths to help patients.
Ideally, Ochoa would like to hire from one of San Antonio’s historically underserved communities, someone who might be especially passionate about helping their neighbors.
“There’s nothing better than a well-trained employee who lives close and who understands the community that we’re serving,” she said. “Someone who’s not just capable of doing the job but is inspired by the mission.”
She believes she’ll find these kinds of people in the city’s newly launched, $230 million workforce development program.
SA Ready to Work is said to be the first of its kind in the country. It aims to take thousands of residents stuck in low-wage jobs and give them training for in-demand, high-paying careers. A former line cook could learn to become an IT specialist, or a rideshare driver could finish a college degree and earn an accountant’s certification. Applicants are guided through training pipelines by case managers. And those emergencies that too often derail ambitions — unexpected bills, a lack of internet access, the need for child care — are kept at bay with $1,500 of support for each participant.
Ochoa is one of dozens of local employers who have signed a pledge with the city to participate in the program. These employers tell the program what jobs they’re looking to fill and what trainings are required for them. This equips the case managers with real-time information when they advise applicants. Employers are also committed to hiring workers from the program.
City voters overwhelmingly approved a broad outline of SA Ready to Work and a sales tax to fund it in November 2020. Since enrollment opened in May, more than 5,400 people have signed up.
The program has been cast as a win-win for two enormous challenges in the city. Advocates call it a monumental anti-poverty effort, given urgency by the pandemic’s economic shocks but designed to counter systemic trends that far predate it. At the same time, it’s an answer to the business community’s pleas for a more skilled workforce, including in-demand STEM positions, which has long posed a barrier in developing San Antonio’s professional economy.
Neighborhoods on the city’s South, West and East sides should be hearing a lot about the program. COPS/Metro — a grassroots coalition of church congregations, schools and unions that campaigned aggressively for the program’s approval — is now hosting hundreds of house meetings in underserved neighborhoods. For its part, the city is pushing radio ads, bus wraps, social media campaigns and more to get the word out.
“We’re going to try to make sure the people who live in those communities are aware that this program is here to help,” said Michael Ramsey, executive director of San Antonio’s Workforce Development Office, which is running the program.
For a Southside clinic like Ochoa’s, Ramsey said the goal of this outreach is to create a “pipeline of nurses and medical assistants who come from the communities themselves.”
At a minimum, that could help the SAVE Clinic attract applicants and retain employees. Right now, many of the city’s nurses and other professionally certified staff live on the North Side.
Carl Negley, Ochoa’s business partner and husband, said some job applicants have withdrawn after realizing that the primary clinic’s location, near Mission San José, would be too far of a drive. That distance was also a contributing reason why two of the clinic’s office managers recently left for jobs closer to their Northside homes.
SA Ready to Work isn’t the only community resource Ochoa and Negley have tapped. They also welcomed a group of paid interns from CAST Med High School, one of the San Antonio Independent School District’s network of STEM-focused high schools.
The pace at the clinic is frenetic, but the vibe is friendly. On a recent Monday, clinicians performed six procedures to improve patients’ blood flow. One staffer brought in homemade tres leches cake. Staffers at all levels, even in the billing department, do everything from helping patients use the restroom to arranging transportation for them. Many volunteer to do community lectures and free screenings out in the field.
Ochoa and Negley understand that for their clinics to succeed, and to retain employees, they need support, too.
Everyone at SAVE makes more than $15 an hour. One employee wants to be a registered nurse, so the clinic is subsidizing her nursing school.
“I’ll give our employees anything they want if it can help the next patient,” Negley said. “Whether it’s education, whether it’s materials, transportation, it’s this-blood-pressure-cuff-is-better, or this laptop-works-better. You can have it.”
