Warwick's Claflin another Real Jobs RI success story

By ETHAN HARTLEY
Posted 12/13/18

By ETHAN HARTLEY -- Most, if not every one of us, have found themselves in the hospital for one reason or another throughout the years. If the hospital's equipment worked as intended, you can probably thank Claflin/CME for that...

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Warwick's Claflin another Real Jobs RI success story

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Most, if not every one of us, have found themselves in the hospital for one reason or another throughout the years. Hopefully, the stay was short – less than a day in most cases. However, others require extended stays and, in these conditions, a couple of thoughts were hopefully not running through your mind.

“Has this hospital’s medical equipment been properly tested? Could it possibly fail when I need it most?”

While these questions are ideally not at the forefront of your concerns, testing and repairing medical equipment is a winning business model for Claflin/CME, located on Jefferson Boulevard in Warwick. The company – which has roots going back to 1817 as an apothecary – has become the largest supplier and repairer of assorted general medical equipment implements in the country.

They supply some of the most prestigious hospitals, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s, Beth Israel Deaconess and, locally, Lifespan and the Care New England affiliates Kent Hospital and Women and Infants – with equipment ranging from fetal heart rate monitors, scales, physician’s tables, equipment sterilizers and literally everything fathomable in between.

“It’s easier to list the equipment that we don’t service,” said Eric Robinson, VP of Operations for Claflin. Robinson said the company supplies and repairs medical products from over 1,400 different manufacturers, comprising over one million individual stock keeping units (SKUs).

Some of the more specialized equipment – like MRI machines – are serviced through more specialty companies, but if it resides in a doctor’s office, hospital room or operating suite, chances are Claflin can supply you with one or fix it if it’s broken.

Since 2015, they were also one of the first companies to jump on the job training program started during Governor Gina Raimondo’s first term in office – Real Jobs RI – which seeks to connect young adults with companies that perform in-demand work, and help provide them training and education to allow them to become permanent members of that industry.

There are two tracks offered to apprentice individuals through the Real Jobs program at Claflin – one involving performing medical equipment IT support to their clients, and the other a technician’s position that involves testing and repairing deployed equipment out in the field.

Fernando Ruiz, 27, started as an apprentice in 2015 with Claflin. He originally thought he would go into IT, but has found a passionate calling in being a repair and service technician. He is preparing to take his certification test in May and is now the lead technician for Claflin’s operations in Connecticut – meaning he is responsible for ensuring that 700 individual pieces of equipment are operating as they should be, throughout multiple facilities for the state’s health department.

“Free education,” Ruiz said in response to what interested him about the apprentice program. “Getting a certificate and experience, it’s something you can’t really turn down.”

As with other participants of the Real Jobs program, Claflin partners with one of the state’s higher education institutions – in their case, the Community College of Rhode Island – and constructs a specific curriculum tailored to their particular needs within their industry. Ruiz has the ability to attend classes free of charge while building his experience working underneath experienced technicians in the company.

“To get a technician with four years of experience coming in off the street with this tight labor market, this presents challenges,” said Stephen DiMatteo, one of the technician managers at Claflin who oversees Ruiz. “I would guess it would take anywhere from six months to a year to hire that person, and we’re bringing them in from the ground up.”

Robinson sees that aspect as the key benefit of teaming up with the state through Real Jobs – the industry is competitive and highly in demand, however finding people to work in this specific niche of the medical industry has proven difficult.

“Rather than continue to struggle to hire talent from outside the company, we thought that this would be a great opportunity to create a program where we could grow our own talent in house,” he said, adding that the state and CCRI were both supportive and helpful in setting up the program’s framework and listening to their feedback about what specific tweaks they needed to make the program work for them.

Claflin is experiencing consistent growth at the moment, and they have been able to take on 10 apprentices between their two career tracks. Robinson said they were looking to add a few more in the next year. Even if he weren’t able to offer full-time jobs to his apprentices once they’ve completed the training portion, he said they would still be in a prime position to succeed in today’s job market.

“I think it gives a nice launching pad for somebody looking to find a career path. Ideally, we’ve been growing so rapidly that we’ve had permanent positions for all of these people so far,” he said. “God forbid, if they got through this program and we don’t, they’re still going to come out of this program with an associate’s degree, ideally a certification and real-world experience where they’ll be able to get a job in this industry anywhere, because of the demand.”

Scott Jensen, director of the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, who also oversees the Real Jobs program, said during a phone interview that Claflin provided a perfect example of the flexibility and malleability of the Real Jobs program, which to date has served 4,500 people (either new placements in jobs or being up-scaled within the same job) comprising 32 separate partnerships and involved 700 companies in Rhode Island.

“So, there are 10 people who have a really great job now, and for a company that is not at the size of Electric Boat or something like that, but is very important – and we’re proud to have them in Rhode Island,” Jensen said. “Those 10 people are going to help Claflin thrive. What a huge win-win. We’re proud of this effort.”

Jensen said that challenges of the program, such as the conflict often created by apprentices who need to balance working full time while also trying to go to school – a problem faced by Ruiz as well – will need to be continuously looked at for improvement. Still, he feels the program is helping strengthen Rhode Island’s industrial economy, which he envisions will help when a recession inevitably emerges.

“When that happens, we want to make the economy so that it isn’t the first one in and the last one out,” he said. “We think that having a really good talent pipeline for as many companies as we can find will help them be more competitive and help achieve that goal.”

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