Covista and Advocate Health: Building a Workforce of Practice-Ready Nurses
What to know
- Covista and Advocate Health have launched a strategic collaboration to expand access to nursing education and build a direct pipeline of practice-ready nurses across the communities Advocate Health serves.
- Delivered through Chamberlain University, the program provides students with financial assistance to support nursing education, specialized training inside Advocate Health facilities, direct employment pathways and financial support for loans during employment.
- America's healthcare system posts more than 702,000 healthcare job vacancies every month, with 306,000 unemployed healthcare workers nationwide available to fill them. Addressing the nursing shortage requires more than traditional recruitment methods—it demands building a system that produces more nurses in the first place.
- This collaboration brings together Covista, America's largest healthcare educator, and Advocate Health, the nation's third-largest nonprofit health system, united around meeting the growing demand for compassionate, practice-ready nurses prepared for today’s complex clinical environments.
America's nursing shortage demands a new model to bring more professionals into the field. Covista and Advocate Health have launched a strategic collaboration to build a direct pipeline of practice-ready nurses into the communities Advocate Health serves. Delivered through Chamberlain University—the largest school of nursing in the United States—the program has been customized around Advocate Health’s workforce needs and clinical environment. Here's a closer look at how it works:
What does the strategic collaboration between Covista and Advocate Health include?
The nursing collaboration between Covista and Advocate Health includes four parts: financial assistance to support nursing education, immersive, specialized training inside Advocate Health facilities, direct pathways to employment and financial support for loans during employment at Advocate Health.
Who are the students that the Covista and Advocate Health collaboration is built to reach?
The program is designed to reach students with a passion to become a nurse, but who need a program built around their lives—working adults, career changers and nontraditional students—candidates who bring real-world experience and a clear commitment to the profession. Expanding access to this population is how the nursing workforce grows in a long-lasting, durable way.
Why is this model an effective approach to building a practice-ready pipeline for Advocate Health?
The collaboration addresses the barriers that keep motivated, qualified people out of nursing—cost, scheduling constraints and career uncertainty. By combining education, meaningful financial support and direct pathways to employment, it opens the profession to candidates who may never have entered it otherwise. But what makes this model distinctly effective for Advocate is the clinical immersion and specialized training that happens inside Advocate's own facilities. That hands-on experience, tailored to Acute and Progressive Care environments, is what builds the practice-ready nurses Advocate needs—graduates who are confident, competent and connected to their future employer before they ever walk through the door.
How does this model support a healthcare system like Advocate Health?
When nurses are trained specifically for the clinical environment where they'll work, the benefits extend across the entire system. Graduates enter Advocate Health already familiar with its facilities, its culture and the demands of their specific role—reducing onboarding time and accelerating their ability to contribute to patient care from day one.
This creates a more stable, sustainable nursing workforce for health systems. For the nurses themselves, it means entering the profession with a clear pathway, a supportive employer and the clinical confidence that comes from training where you'll practice. This is what it looks like when education and healthcare systems build the workforce together—and why it works better for everyone.
How does Covista build employer-education collaborations around a health system’s specific needs?
Covista builds custom workforce pathways designed around the specific needs of each health system we partner with—their markets, clinical environment and workforce needs.
For Advocate Health, that means building a program around the clinical roles their facilities need most. The collaboration with Advocate Health focuses on two high-demand areas: Acute Care and Progressive Care. Both tracks are delivered through Chamberlain's Practice Ready. Specialty Focused.® curriculum, pairing Chamberlain's education expertise with hands-on clinical training inside Advocate Health facilities.
Why are employer-education collaborations like this necessary?
America's healthcare system faces a staffing shortage that is already affecting the care patients receive today. More than 702,000 healthcare job vacancies are posted every month, with 306,000 unemployed workers nationwide available to fill them. According to the Covista Care Capacity Monitor, 84% of healthcare executives have reduced their capacity to serve patients, with half scaling back care moderately or significantly. From the front lines, 76% of clinicians say the shortage is compromising their ability to deliver high-quality care.
Conventional recruiting methods like signing bonuses, staffing agencies and competing for nurses already in the field redistribute a workforce that isn't large enough to begin with. The solution is to transform the system that produces nurses in the first place. Strategic collaborations like the one between Covista and Advocate Health create a model to do that.
Can Covista customize an employer-education collaboration around a health system’s specific needs?
Yes. Covista builds custom workforce pathways designed around the specific needs of each health system we partner with—their markets, clinical environment and workforce needs. As America's largest healthcare educator, Covista has the education infrastructure, clinical expertise and geographic reach to build that kind of custom pathway for any health system.
The data supports this approach. According to the Covista Care Capacity Monitor, nearly 70% of healthcare executives identify education partnerships as among their most effective workforce strategies—yet only 22% are significantly investing in them. These collaborations help to close that gap.
