Paul Szmal: It's our Health Matters segment with our friends from University of Rochester Medicine Finger Lakes Health. So first we'll welcome in Kim Alacoa. Good morning.
Guest: Good morning, Paul. How are you?
Paul Szmal: I am good as always. Good to have you on board. Now what do we have going on?
Guest: I just have a couple announcements. As we mentioned last time, next Tuesday, June 9th from 4 to 6, we are having an open house at Finger Lakes Health Primary Care, which is located in the medical office building adjacent to Geneva General Hospital on the second floor. And this is welcoming back Dr. Arthur Equinazi and Dr. Platzer back to caring for our community in Geneva. They'll be alongside Greg Fix, Stephanie Husney, and Amanda Briggs at the practice. So it's 4 to 6. We encourage everyone to come out, take a tour of the practice, say hi to Dr. Platzer, Dr. Equinazi. We are accepting new patients at this practice, so we're looking forward to seeing everyone. And the other reminder, as we've mentioned a couple times, is we're moving forward on our mission at Finger Lakes Health to implement eRECORD or EPIC across all of our facilities. And this is allowing us to have one patient, one record, so that your results, your diagnostics, your refills, your communicating with your provider, everything will be available to you as of November 1st. But we're encouraging people to sign up for MyChart now. And you can find a link for that on flhealth.org. If you go to our patient portal program, at the very bottom you'll see a link to MyChart. So we're just asking people to go out, get signed up now, so that on November 1st you'll have access to everything. But right now you can see your lab results, you can see diagnostics. So there are things that are available now.
Paul Szmal: Excellent. Would you like to introduce our guests for this morning?
Guest: Yes. Today we have Kara Silkewicz. Kara has been with Finger Lakes Health for almost five years. She's done this radio show. I think this is probably her fifth time doing it. We try to bring her out every year. And she is a Talent Acquisition Supervisor for Finger Lakes Health. Hey, good morning Kara. How are you this morning?
Kara Silkewicz: Good. Thanks for having me.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, appreciate you being here. A Talent Acquisition Coordinator. It's a fancy sounding title.
Kara Silkewicz: I'm a recruiter. So I oversee our recruitment team here at Finger Lakes Health. And that recruitment team covers not just the obvious, because when people think, okay, if a health organization is hiring, oh, they must be looking for nurses. And while we know that's true, nurses are always in demand. There's so many other different positions that are available.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. So nutritional services, you know, finance, accounting, patient access reps. There's a lot more involved besides nursing. Obviously, nursing being very, very heavy. Just to give you an idea, I went to flhealth.org slash careers and pulled that up a few minutes ago. This is just the first page of job opportunities. There's a medical secretary, medical assistant per diem, a patient access rep, a couple of accounting positions, a medical assistant at the Family Health Center in Dundee, another medical assistant position, a surgery scheduler for gastroenterology, and CNAs and a CNA trainee. And like I said, that's just page one. So these are a variety of positions that cover a variety of different disciplines.
Kara Silkewicz: Absolutely. So what's unique is there's something for everybody in health care. And with that being said, anybody who is interested in health care and takes on a position with Finger Lakes Health, we're very big on growing your career, supporting you in doing so. We do a lot of that with nursing, but, you know, we're able to do that with other areas as well. And some of the other jobs, I just went to page two, you mentioned nutritional services.
Paul Szmal: Yes.
Kara Silkewicz: Nutritional services aide, a cook.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. Yeah. Athletic trainer.
Kara Silkewicz: Yes. Security officer.
Paul Szmal: Yep. As well as patient registration and an LPN urgent care part-time position at the urgent care in Seneca Falls.
Kara Silkewicz: Yes. Yeah. So what do you look for in an employee? The biggest thing for us is we want somebody who seems like they're very, very excited to be able to serve our community. The other thing that we really like to take a look at is their we like to look at their job history. You know, we really want to see somebody who has had a consistent job history. And the biggest thing is we really just want somebody who has, you know, the same values as us as far as Finger Lakes is concerned.
Paul Szmal: How about people that, you know, maybe they've been away from the job market for a few years and are looking to get back into things. Are there opportunities for them as well?
Kara Silkewicz: Absolutely. We can help them there. Like I said, there's opportunity for everybody. We offer CNA training classes to anybody who's interested in the patient care. We offer those seven times a year. We have two programs. One class is starting July 20th, and then we have another class that's starting August 11th. So those are actually open for individuals who want to get into hands-on training. And there's so many departments and so many great managers that are going to work with their employees to get them to where they need to be. So if somebody's taken, you know, a break from the workforce for a while, we've brought a lot of individuals in. They've grown with us. They've started with us. And, you know, they're very successful.
Paul Szmal: And correct me if I'm wrong with the CNA program. That's kind of getting in on the ground level where you can advance and maybe go for an LPN or an RN position and work your way up the ladder that way. And as you said, the education and training comes along with that.
Kara Silkewicz: Yes, it does. If you're moving along.
Paul Szmal: Right. And we will support you.
Kara Silkewicz: We have two colleges on campus. So we have Marion S. Whalen, which that offers a 10-month program for LPNs. We also offer a two-year program for an associate's degree nurses program with Finger Lakes Health College of Nursing. We have CNAs. They come in. They go through our CNA class. They're paid to do so. They work as a CNA in our long-term care skilled nursing facilities. And they can actually go to our school at the same time. And we will help them pay for it. We also support them with something we call supplemental pay, where they're working full-time hours when school's not in session. And then when school's in session, they work part-time hours but get full-time pay, full-time benefits. So that way, they're still able to support themselves and focus on school. And the training that we're talking about here, that doesn't just include the classroom. There is some practical experience that comes along with that where you're actually kind of in the environment.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. Yeah. So our employees, they're working directly with our residents. They're working with our patients. So yeah.
Kara Silkewicz: How many positions do you hope to fill in the course of a year?
Paul Szmal: Oh, geez. That's hard to say.
Kara Silkewicz: I was going to say that seems like it's a pretty big number.
Paul Szmal: But again, it's a big organization.
Kara Silkewicz: It is. Well, what I can tell you is our recruitment team, we fill at least 500 positions each year. That's at least 500 positions. Last year, we did more than that. We're expected to do more than that this year as well. So we're at least filling that many positions. And one of the big questions I'm sure that comes up with people that are looking for jobs are benefits and what benefits are offered.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. So one of the things I will say about our benefits is they are very, very affordable when we're talking about health insurance benefits. Very affordable, minimal amounts that our employees are seeing coming out of their paychecks biweekly for that. We offer, as far as health insurance is concerned, two very flexible type of plans. PTO, we offer anywhere from 136 hours of PTO annually, which is a little over three weeks, to 176 hours of PTO, a little over four weeks, even 215 hours of PTO when we're thinking about some other positions. So we really want our employees to have a really nice work-life balance. We value that within our facility. And one of the neat things is if you work for the organization, you can find a practice like Kim was talking about where you can have your care right within, your personal care right within the organization. And that is one of the perks too.
Kara Silkewicz: I cannot say enough about our providers. We have wonderful providers. I know my team is taking advantage of our providers here. I know my family personally has had wonderful experiences with our providers here as well. So that's another great opportunity while you're working with us.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. And it takes the complication out of everything when you kind of one house it like that. It takes a lot of the, you know, a lot of the paperwork and a lot of the red tape and everything. And it just blows that away.
Kara Silkewicz: Yes. And it's a completely different type of experience. I had, I had been before starting here, I had been with another provider for a very, very, very long time and she had retired. And so I got a provider with Finger Lakes Health, the best, the best thing I've ever done. And I can't say more about that. So if you want to find out more about careers with Finger Lakes Health and University of Rochester Medicine, again, the website is flhealth.org slash careers. That's flhealth.org slash careers. And you can browse the job openings that are available. And for majority of these, you can apply right online.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. And this is a perfect opportunity for the time, like having Cara on the show today. So we're encouraging all of our parents and our grandparents, everyone who's listening to the station. We know that you have children graduating high school, you have children graduating, grandchildren graduating college. So as Paul mentioned, we have plenty of opportunities across the board. So we encourage everyone to reach out to us.
Kara Silkewicz: Yeah. And again, some of these positions are not directly healthcare related. If you're good with food, you know, you can go for that cook position or there are clerical positions, if that's something that you're interested in. And of course, if you maybe have a little bit of medical background, there's places there for you too. For everyone.
Paul Szmal: Cara, I appreciate you coming in. Thank you so much.
Kara Silkewicz: Thanks for having me. Good to see you as always.
Paul Szmal: Nice to see you, Paul. And again, that's flhealth.org slash careers. That's the website you want to check out to find out about the job listings that are available and applying online.
