Date: 04/08/2020

Author(s): Erin P. Fraher, Patricia Pittman, Bianca K. Frogner, Joanne Spetz, Jean Moore, Angela J. Beck, David Armstrong, and Peter I. Buerhaus

 

Current efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic aim to slow viral spread and increase testing, protect health care workers from infection, and obtain ventilators and other equipment to prepare for a surge of critically ill patients. But additional actions are needed to rapidly increase health workforce capacity and to replenish it when personnel are quarantined or need time off to rest or care for sick family members. It seems clear that health care delivery organizations, educators, and government leaders will all have to be willing to cut through bureaucratic barriers and adapt regulations to rapidly expand the U.S. health care workforce and sustain it for the duration of the pandemic.