Healthcare’s Uneven Staffing Shortage

The healthcare labor market is expecting to see staffing shortages of around 100,000 workers by 2028, according to a new report by Mercer. Current trends show that the healthcare workforce should grow 1.5 million by that year, to 18.6 million workers, but demand for these employees will outpace it. While a relative shortage of 100,000 workers nationwide might not seem like a huge problem in aggregate, individual states and specialties are seeing more significant variances.

Some states like California and Pennsylvania are projected to see surpluses of healthcare workers of more than 16,000 by 2028 while New York, New Jersey, and Tennessee will have deficits above that same threshold. New York, in particular, is facing a shortfall of more than 60,000 healthcare workers.

Despite these statewide numbers, individual specialties tell a further story as despite the expectation that California will have the largest surplus of healthcare workers, the state is expected to have the greatest deficit of both OB-GYNs and pediatricians. This means that a solution isn’t as simple as trying to incentivize California’s healthcare workers to move to New York. To be fair though, hospitals in New York state should be considering tactics to attract talent now, as the state is headed for worker deficits across all of the high-level worker categories (Home Health Aides, Nurse Practitioners, Nursing Assistants, Physicians, and Registered Nurses).

Mercer created an interactive map that can be filtered by state and category to get a better idea of the types of staffing changes that could be coming to a specific region. The map can be accessed here.

For some organizations, staffing issues aren’t a looming threat in the distance, but have been a very real problem since the start of the pandemic. Healthcare trade publications can scarcely get through a week or even day of coverage without needing to address clinician burnout and the increasing number of healthcare employees who say they’re on the verge of leaving the field. In fact, a quick search through our own site reveals that finding and keeping quality employees across all departments has become somewhat of an evergreen topic.

An Axios article from earlier this summer argues that the staffing crisis is here now. 83 million Americans don’t have access to primary care, 80% of physicians say they’re overworked, and no one can seem to agree how to best implement and enforce a consistent clinician to patient ratio.

Extract discusses the problem frequently because we see how our solution impacts not only the front lines of HIM and data entry staffed tasked with managing, matching, abstracting, and filing a constant deluge of incoming paper and faxes, but also clinicians who rely on discrete data, and executives who are looking to trend productivity or patient data.

If your clinicians don’t want to have to search through PDFs for patient data and referral compatibility, if they need data accessible at HIMSS EMRAM Stage 7 turnaround times, or if you need to multiply your existing data entry staff, we’d encourage you to reach out to see a demonstration of our software or let us show you the impact we can make on your workflow.