We have all seen the disturbing headlines of economic failures, bailouts, corporate bankruptcies, and massive layoffs. Economies around the world are slowing down. We also see the continued and raging debates over health care costs, delivery and quality as healthcare organizations and providers fight to reduce or control costs while delivering quality health care and attracting a qualified workforce. Whatever the reasons, there is a growing shortage of clinical, health, and allied health workers. Factors cited as contributing to the shortage include an aging workforce; high retirement eligibility; difficulty in recruiting and retaining workers; lack of educational, training, and retraining opportunities; high vacancy rates; high turnover rates; lack of opportunities for career advancement; low pay; and/or increased work load demand.

Recently, increased attention (and resources) has been placed on deploying new clinical technologies, devices, and treatments. Initiatives and advances include automated solutions for electronic health and medical records, bio-surveillance and disease reporting, public health monitoring, electronic prescribing, clinical decision support, personal health records, home health monitoring, and remote consultations. As the demand for and ability of these technologies to improve patient safety and quality grows their adoption will (hopefully) be more widespread. Yet, these technical advances also contribute to the workforce shortage because of the growing need for educated and trained personnel to develop, maintain and use these applications, products, and systems.

Healthcare organizations and businesses that use information technology can now add biomedical and health informaticians to their “help wanted” lists in addition to all the hands-on caregivers such as primary care providers, geriatricians, physicians, nurses, dentists, nursing assistants, home care aides, lab technicians, pharmacists, optometrists, chiropractors, dietitians, physical, occupational and speech therapists, public health personnel, and radiology technicians, to name just a few.

Could the economic downturn be a silver lining for some of the healthcare industry woes?

At the risk of stating the obvious, couldn’t the industry ramp up and educate the general public, students, potential workforce candidates and policy makers about the need for healthcare workers, the diverse opportunities available in the healthcare field, and the value and importance of healthcare workers?

Perhaps in days past the more glamorous and potentially lucrative jobs in finance, banking, real estate, and Wall Street attracted an abundance of students and potential employees.

- With the demise and bailouts of some of the world’s most renown financial organizations, what can be done to marshal these human resources into healthcare?
- How can we foster an enthusiasm for entering the health professions?
- How can we better promote the attractiveness of careers in healthcare?
- How might we use the global economic meltdown as a lever to place a higher priority on training, preparing and supporting workers for careers in health care and provide incentives for people to enter the health professions?
- What can we do to assure that our educational programs have enough faculty to teach students?
- How can we assure that there are adequate numbers of educational and training programs so we won’t have to turn away qualified applicants?

These topics has been the subject of previous discussions.* The new Administration, Congress, academic and business leaders, professional societies, along with state and local governments have a role to play to help stop the erosion of our delivery system and increase the nation’s capacity of health care workers. This is a complex problem that cannot be solved by one entity or special interest group working alone. We need bold, novel, innovative, multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder solutions. And we need them now.

* Selected Notes:

American Hospital Association. The Healthcare Workforce Shortage and Its Implications for America’s Hospitals www.aha.org/aha/content/2001/pdf/FcgWorkforceReport.pdf

Sally Buck, M.S. Health Information Technology Workforce: Addressing Pending HIT Worker Shortages March 2008 Rural Health Resource Center www.ruralcenter.org/documents/HIT%20Workforce.ppt

Debra A. Draper, Robert E. Hurley, Johanna Lauer. Public Health Workforce Shortages Imperil Nation’s Health Research Brief No. 4
April 16, 2008 http://www.hschange.com/CONTENT/979/

William Hersh, MD. Characterizing the HIT Workforce. http://davinci.ohsu.edu/~hersh/hit-workforce-hersh.pdf

HRSA. The Healthcare Workforce in Eight States: Education, Practice, and Policy. ftp://ftp.hrsa.gov/bhpr/workforce/states/spring04/INTERSTATE.pdf

Institute of Medicine. Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce http://www.iom.edu/agingAmerica

Jo Isgrigg, Ph.D. Oregon Healthcare Workforce Institute June 20, 2008 http://www.orhospitalquality.org/Documents/Workshortage61808.pdf

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