Health Workforce Trends and Emerging Issues

This guide brings together all the Resources, Organizations, Funding, Events, and News we've discovered related to Trends and Emerging Issues.

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Overview

The health workforce and its associated work environment are very dynamic. Identifying prevailing trends and emerging issues is critical to workforce planning and development. Trends and emerging issues affect not only supply and demand, but also how workers are trained, deployed and utilized.

Current health workforce trends include an increase in demand for care as the baby boomers age and a significant portion of the workforce retires. Persistent obstacles to meeting workforce demand include a shortage of faculty clinical sites for nurses and a shortage of graduate medical education funding for physicians. Other concerns noted in the American Hospital Association’s “Workforce Facts and Trends at a Glance” encompass difficulty recruiting providers into rural communities and primary care fields and generational differences.

Supply and Demand

• Increased workforce shortages due to expanded insurance coverage under health reform
• Potential retention challenges due to burnout for staff serving more patients under health reform
• Increased demand for health information and informatics occupations related to health information technology (HIT) implementation

Education and Training

• Locating training in community settings, where care is increasingly being provided, such as training residents in teaching health centers
• Increasing education requirements for different professions, often in the form of new degrees like the Doctor of Nursing Practice
• Interprofessional training to equip health professionals to work together
• Increased distance learning to expand training opportunities, especially for rural areas
• Career ladders to prepare low-skill workers for more skilled positions

Care Delivery

• Systems design: redesigning the delivery of care to use the health workforce effectively and efficiently and facilitate care coordination through models like accountable care organizations and medical homes
• Scope of practice: new approaches to who provides what types of care to enable health care professionals to maximize use of their skills while still ensuring patient safety

Policy

• Development of new criteria for shortage designations, to target health care access programs to the areas of highest need.
• Examining the economic value of healthcare professionals and their work, to inform workforce planning efforts and reimbursement programs

• Health Care Employment Projections: An Analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Projections, 2010-2020, 3/2012
• Workforce Facts and Trends at a Glance: The Hospital Leader's Guide, 1/2010

Page last updated April 20, 2012