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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Institute of Medicine Report to the US Department of Health and Human Services about the state of oral health in America.
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In 1977, the federal government launched the nation’s largest and most significant program to collect data on the registered nurse (RN) workforce of the United States—the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN). This survey is conducted by the U.S. Health Resources and Services...
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Efforts to expand access to nursing care and remedy the global nursing shortages are hampered when nurses are unemployed or underemployed. This monograph seeks to fill the gap in understanding on this issue, including nurses who are currently inactive but who might return to nursing work given...
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This report summarizes the findings of a survey conducted in spring 2011 of general acute care hospital employers of registered nurses (RNs) in California to evaluate the overall demand for RNs in the state. The survey reveals variation in the demand for RNs across California, the lack of positions...
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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...
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Southcentral Foundation (SCF) assumed management of a primary care system with low patient satisfaction and high staff turnover. This led SCF to create extensive employee development programs and to support a human resources policy in which frontline staff, including medical assistants, can work...
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California is the first state to mandate specific nurse-to-patient ratios in general acute care hospitals. These ratios went into effect January 1, 2004 and apply "at all times". Little is known about the changes in staffing that occurred subsequent to the implementation of this legislation. This...
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In the course of rapid expansion, WellMed Medical Group found itself hiring increasing numbers of medical assistants (MAs). However, quality and turnover issues with the existing pool of externally-trained MAs inspired the organization to develop its own medical assistant training school. The...
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Concern about medication errors inspired Franklin Square Hospital Center to develop a medication safety training program for medical assistants. This initiative empowered medical assistants to think independently, and inspired administrators to offer more standardized training and advancement...
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The Central Massachusetts Community Health Center Partnership (CMCHCP) is a collaborative effort of employers and training centers intended to address the workforce needs of Worcester area community health centers. The Partnership’s first project focuses on training incumbent and new medical...
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The biennial California Survey of Registered Nurses provides information about the demographics, education, and employment of registered nurses in the state.
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DFD Russell Medical Centers in rural central Maine involve medical assistants in quality improvement efforts through a) engaging them in small scale testing and refinement of practice improvements (PDSAs), b) providing them with periodic reports on quality measures directly related to their...
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This report summarizes the findings of a survey conducted in fall 2010 of general acute care hospital employers of registered nurses (RNs) in California. This survey was designed to evaluate the overall demand for RNs in the state, and to examine the capacity of acute care hospitals to hire new RN...
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This study assesses whether California’s minimum nurse staffing legislation affected the amount of uncompensated care provided by California hospitals. Using data from California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, the American Hospital Association Annual Survey and InterStudy,...
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Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group (NMPG) took the unusual step of developing a clinical career ladder for its medical assistants (MAs) in 2003, and, more recently, for its patient services representatives (PSRs). Medical assistants are the largest group of non-licensed employees at NMPG....
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The community health center movement that was founded in the mid-1960s has since grown into a complex system of clinics that are critical to the delivery of high quality, comprehensive health care services for poor and underserved populations across California and the nation. Historically,...
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PeaceHealth Medical Group received a grant to pilot a patient-centered medical home in one of its practices in Eugene, Oregon. “Team Fillingame” revised staff roles and added a part-time mental health worker to address patients’ social, behavioral and medical needs. Using a patient activation...
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BACKGROUND: Nurse staffing has been linked to hospital patient outcomes; however, previous results were inconsistent because of variations in measures of staffing and were only rarely specific to types of patient care units. OBJECTIVE: To determine the relationship between nurse staffing in general...
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In response to long wait times and low patient satisfaction scores, the University of California, Davis Medical Center Department of Family and Community Practice redesigned its residency-based Family Practice Center into a Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH). This model expanded the role of...
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The University of Utah Community Clinics’ success in achieving a remarkable financial turnaround empowered the organization to innovate further in order to improve the patient experience. The organization implemented a team-based model of care that increased the ratio of medical assistants (MAs)...