States struggle to find solutions to health care worker shortage

The shortage of health care workers in the United States is becoming more dire by the day. The National Academy for State Health Policy, a nonpartisan forum of state health policymakers, notes that governors of at least 20 states have made the increasing lack of health care workers a focal point of their recent state of the state speeches. They’ve called for a variety of policy fixes — from improving recruitment efforts, easing licensing requirements, and boosting training programs to increasing compensation.

“Workforce in health care is an issue of national significance and is reaching a crisis in many parts of the country,” Akin Demehin, director of policy at the American Hospital Association trade group, told Pew. “Leading up to the pandemic there were already significant workforce challenges. The pandemic has amplified them, stemming from fatigue after wave after successive waves of patients.”

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Rural areas have been hit particularly hard, Pew reports, citing the job vacancy rate in Missouri hospitals, which was over 20% in 2021 and is heading toward 25% this year. “We just have increased difficulty in recruiting and attracting folks who want to live and work in a rural area,” said Craig Thompson, chief executive officer of Golden Valley Memorial Healthcare, a rural Missouri health system located more than an hour from Kansas City.

Aggravating the shortage is an increase in the number of health care workers leaving the profession, citing exhaustion and burnout in the wake of COVID-19 — a problem already on the rise prior to the pandemic.

“In 2019, the United States had nearly 20,000 fewer doctors than required to meet the country’s health care needs, according to an estimate by the Association of American Medical Colleges, which analyzes the physician workforce,” Pew notes. “At the current rate, the group said, that gap could grow as high as 124,000 by 2034, including a shortage of as many as 48,000 primary care doctors.”

There are fewer nurses, too: “The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that each year through 2030, there will be nearly 195,000 vacancies for registered nurses,” according to Pew. “National Nurses United, a union and professional association that claims 175,000 members nationally, insists that most states have enough nurses to meet demand, but that staffing and safety policies at hospitals reduce the numbers of nurses willing to fill positions.”

Perhaps that’s why Columbus, Ohio-based Mount Carmel Health System — in a move straight out of the 1980s medical sitcom Doogie Howser, M.D. — recently announced it will recruit workers younger than 18 to work in its facilities.

The organization is “focusing on finding the next generation of healthcare workers and providing support to our current workforce,” Rachel Barb, the health system’s regional director of talent acquisition, told Becker’s Hospital Review. “By strengthening and retaining seasoned health care professionals, the next generation will learn from experience.”

Mount Carmel will launch its patient-facing program for interested young people 16 and older this spring, with the first training class taking place in late June.

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