By the California Improvement Network Team at Healthforce Center

Recruiting, nurturing, and retaining staff is an increasingly greater challenge for providers of community health and social services. In an era of persistent labor shortages, insufficient resources, and soaring costs, organizations must adapt with greater flexibility, new approaches, and humility to sustain the workforce required.

By Kristen Hwang. Reprinted with permission from CalMatters. Leer en espanol.

California’s experience after Proposition 209 offers some clues and lessons

By Robin Buller. Reprinted with permission from the California Health Care Foundation.

Two new reports released; webinar offered ways organizations can lead on this critical issue

California is facing a drastic shortfall of behavioral health care providers that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, an aging workforce, high turnover, poor geographic distribution, and a workforce that does not match the racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of Californians.

About a third of Californians live in areas where there is a shortage of primary care clinicians. The shortage is particularly acute in rural areas such as the Inland Empire, Northern California and the Sierras, and San Joaquin Valley. The rapidly growing Inland Empire has only 40 primary care physicians per 100,000 people, far below the recommended range of 3,000 to 3,500 physicians.

Access to primary medical care is closely associated with better health outcomes for patients, fewer hospital visits, and longer life spans. Yet in the United States, primary care spending for all payers accounted for merely 4.6% to 12.1% of total health care expenditures, depending on how broadly primary care is defined. For the first time, a national scorecard provides a deep dive into where primary care is lacking within a matrix of recommendations.

By Kate Ruder for Kaiser Health News. Reprinted with persmission.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — During her 12-hour overnight shift, Brianna Shelton helps residents at BeeHive Homes Assisted Living go to the bathroom. Many of them have dementia, and some can’t get out of bed on their own. Only a few can remember her name, but that doesn’t matter to her.

“They’re somebody’s mom, somebody’s grandma, somebody’s great-grandmother,” Shelton said. “I want to take care of them like I would take care of my family.”

By Andrew Schwartz with photography by Elisabeth Fall. Reprinted with permission from the UCSF School of Nursing.

The UCSF School of Nursing is partnering with Hartnell College to prepare first-generation-to-college students to become nurses, equipped with the skills to advance health care for residents in the underserved Salinas Valley.

UCSF Report Shows Potential Shortfall of 4,700 Clinicians as Soon as 2025

California is expected to face a statewide shortfall of primary care providers in the next 15 years, with acute shortages in the Central Valley, Central Coast and Southern Border areas, due to the uneven distribution of care across the state, according to a report by Healthforce Center at UCSF.