In the growing debate over health care reform, there has been relatively little mentioned about one of the most important aspects of any health system (reformed or not): the nation’s health workforce of doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, allied health professionals, public health workers, psychologists, veterinarians, and so forth. It seems that it is taken for granted that whatever does (or does not) happen in health care, there will be an adequate health workforce backbone to take care of us. But this is, in fact, not clearly the case. There have been reports and calls alerting us to impending or actual shortages of health professionals. These shortages are not necessarily profession-specific; they may also involve specialties within a given health profession, such as primary care. Another perspective posits that the principle workforce problem is a maldistribution of the kinds and locations of providers as well as variations in their practice styles. An additional concern is that the kinds of types of providers that will be needed in the new era of genomic and personalized medicine are probably going to be somewhat different from what we have now.
Yet there is no overarching approach or policy concerning the nation’s health workforce. We instead rely on a myriad of market forces, agencies, regulatory and accreditation bodies in a patchwork quilt arrangement. As a result, it is exceedingly difficult to answer the question: what would be the ideal composition of the U.S. health workforce to best meet our health care needs? For now, it’s like trying to compute an equation without a denominator. It’s time for the health workforce discussion to be front and center regardless of the extent of health care reform.
Tags: doctor shortage, Health Reform, health workforce, nursing shortage
