Research in Action

At Healthforce Center, our research on the health care workforce offers timely analysis and guidance for providers, policymakers and funders in addressing critical delivery and improvement challenges. We have a team of nationally recognized research experts who work to define issues and support health policy change with rigorous analysis, high-quality data and actionable recommendations.


Our expertise covers the entire health workforce — the full range of licensed professions, credentialed occupations, and emerging roles such as community health workers and peer providers, and across all types of settings from acute to long-term care. We specialize in examining evolving trends in care models, care team composition, and promising new models for the delivery of high-quality health care.

Committed to Improving Health Equity

Our commitment to improving health equity and ensuring a diverse health workforce translates into research that emphasizes expanding cultural competence and language concordance, promoting workforce diversity through education and development programs, and evaluating care models that ensure health equity.

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  • Report on findings from a 2011 survey of a sample of California physicians regarding the availability of electronic health records in their practices.
  • High patient turnover (patient throughput generated by admissions, discharges, and transfers) contributes to increased demands and resources for care. We examined how the relationship between registered nurse (RN) staffing and failure-to-rescue (FTR) varied with patient turnover levels by analyzing...
  • California’s community clinics require strong, committed leaders who can navigate their organizations through an increasingly complex healthcare system and meet the needs of their diverse patient populations. Clinics are facing considerable pressure to adapt to changes brought on by the passage of...
  • The San Francisco Quality Culture Series (SFQCS) was as a year-long collaborative learning program for clinic leadership teams aimed at building their improvement capacity and skills as leaders of dynamic primary care practices. Twenty-one clinic teams completed the program, which ran from January...
  • Objective: To evaluate the effects of different methods of remuneration on the professional behaviour of primary care dentists and associated patient outcomes. Full Publication
  • The ability of California Registered Nurses (RNs) to provide culturally competent care to Californians is associated with the language skills and diversity of the RN workforce. Moreover, diversity in the RN profession reflects progress in providing opportunities for young people to obtain...
  • More than 8% of employed RNs licensed since 2004 in the United States were educated overseas, yet little is known about the conditions of their recruitment or the impact of that experience on health care practice. This study assessed whether the labor rights of foreign-educated nurses were at risk...
  • This report summarizes the findings of a survey conducted in fall 2011 of general acute care hospital employers of registered nurses (RNs) in California. This survey is the second of three annual surveys, with the last survey scheduled for fall 2012. Together, these surveys provide an opportunity...
  • OBJECTIVES: To identify the factors and strategies that were associated with successful implementation of hospital-based information technology (IT) systems in US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, and how these might apply to other hospitals. STUDY DESIGN: Qualitative...
  • This monograph assesses how the Affordable Care Act will influence the demand for health care workers, as well as the nature of care they provide. Full Publication
  • This Brief reviews the main sources of data stakeholders at the national and state level can use to measure education levels among RNs. Each data source is described, with attention to the population of nurses or nursing graduates it represents. Nuances and shortcomings of the data are discussed to...
  • Much of the public discussion about health care reform has focused on whether various components of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are constitutional, and whether the act can be repealed. But an arguably more important question is whether our health care work force is large enough to handle the...
  • This paper combines resources from the organization studies and sociology literatures to advance understanding of institutional change processes in health care that emerge from the professionalization projects of occupations. Conceptually, we introduce a model that combines the 'archetype' approach...
  • OBJECTIVE: This study compared patient outcomes and staffing in Magnet® and non-Magnet hospitals. BACKGROUND: The pursuit of Magnet designation is a highly regarded program for improving staff and patient outcomes. Research has confirmed that Magnet hospitals provide positive work environments for...
  • This survey of clinical nurse specialists in California provided information about education, employment, demographics, and the practice of these important advanced practice nurses.
  • This survey of nurse practitioners and nurse midwives in California provided information about education, employment, demographics, and the practice of these important advanced practice nurses.
  • New workforce models in dentistry are being explored as potential solutions to improving the dental care delivery system for underserved populations.  In 1998, California officially recognized a new dental health profession: the Registered Dental Hygienist in Alternative Practice (RDHAP)....
  • This report presents supply and demand forecasts for the Registered Nurse (RN) workforce in California from 2011 through 2030. These new forecasts are based on data from the 2010 California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) Survey of Registered Nurses, the US Bureau of Health Professions (BHPr)...
  • This comprehensive report, sponsored by the California Wellness Foundation, explores the current and future capacity of California’s health care workforce to meet the expected increase in demand resulting from expanded insurance coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)....
  • As reported earlier, nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) play a critical role in the delivery of primary care in California, providing the majority of primary care services in over 20% of the state’s community clinics. This follow-up, qualitative research explores how and why...

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