HSA has been working for more than a decade to negotiate a new classification system that accurately reflects the complexity of the modern health care team and the essential roles of health science professionals on the multi-disciplinary team. In this round of bargaining, government and employers came to the table with funding to apply the classification redesign needed to modernize the system, recognize those roles, and ensure fairness and consistency in applying the classification system.
Here's why that matters.
Your wage is determined by your classification. Your classification is determined by the health science profession you belong to, and the level of duties and responsibilities of your job. A good classification system keeps pace with the ever-changing ways in which the healthcare system is structured and delivers care. It also ensures that your role in that system is clearly recognized and that you are paid for the full range of the work you do.
The classification structures are mostly unchanged since 1990, despite the fact that your work has become more complex and acute. In some cases, there aren't enough classification/pay levels, leaving health science professionals stuck with little room for career advancement. In other cases, members are paid less than colleagues performing work of the same scope and level of responsibility. The classifications system needs to be updated to apply uniformly to workers across the full spectrum of health science professionals to reflect the reality of the health care system as a whole.
A more uniform and meaningful classification system will help all professions, but will impact many of them differently depending on how well or poorly-served the profession has come to be under the current system. It will also take some time for many of the improvements, but it means that all professions will be recognized equally for their levels of responsibility and any advanced practice roles they may undertake in research, clinical specialization, quality assurance, education, performance of special procedures, and health information systems/applications specialization.
The bottom line is this: while the health care system has become much more complex in the last thirty years, and continues to evolve, the system that determines your rate of pay has not kept up. Improvements to the classification system will deliver overdue recognition of specialized work and, perhaps more importantly, create a foundation that can support new levels of specialization as health science professions continue to develop. This means that the system will be able to assign the appropriate level of pay proactively, not reactively.