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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Forecasting the supply and demand of the nursing workforce is crucial to understanding the short and long term needs for nurses in California and for identifying strategies for addressing future shortages. This presentation discusses several forecasting methods and presents data for the 2007...
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This report presents supply and demand forecasts for the Registered Nurse (RN) workforce in California from 2007 through 2030. These forecasts are based on data from the 2006 California Board of Registered Nursing Survey of Registered Nurses, the US Bureau of Health Professions 2004 National Sample...
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The move toward “cultural competence” that responds to the diversity of California’s population is reflected in efforts of California hospitals to provide linguistically appropriate care for their patients who have limited English proficiency. Legal mandates underscore this need. Health care...
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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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This presentation explains different approaches to calculate and forecast “demand”: from the overly simplified “per capita” model, to the non-normative market demand and a “need” assessment model. Suggested ways to improve forecasting include not looking at one workforce group in isolation and...
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The 2006 Survey of California Registered Nurses is the fifth in a series of surveys designed to describe licensed nurses in California and to examine changes over time. Other studies were completed in 1990, 1993, 1997, and 2004. The survey solicited information about: Opinions about the...
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This presentation takes a look at the complex reality of nursing workforce planning. For example, policy makers often lack the expertise as well as concrete research to make positive decisions. Even if programs are approved they may not be funded due to a state’s budget crisis.
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Forecasting the health workforce is crucial to understanding whether perceived shortages are real, to learn whether a shortage is likely to persist, and to guide policy to educate and retain health workers. This presentation provides strategies for forecasting workforce supply and demand and...
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Information from California’s professional and vocational education programs are a key link in estimating the supply of workers for individual health professions. The principal objective of this project is to map the “education link” in California’s supply chain for selected health professions....
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Objective To determine if professional medical interpreters have a positive impact on clinical care for limited English proficiency (LEP) patients. Data Sources A systematic literature search, limited to the English language, in PubMed and PsycINFO for publications between 1966 and...
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This report provides a profile of the dental hygiene workforce in California.
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Registered Dental Hygienists (RDHs) play a critical role in efforts to promote access to oral health care and prevent dental diseases. The heightened attention on the nation's oral health needs and growing disparities in oral health, as well as pending revisions in federal procedures for...
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There is a growing interest in the use of community health workers in various roles in the US health care system. These workers go by various titles and names—including promotora and community health advisor—but all assist members of the communities they serve. As the role of these workers becomes...
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Minnesota is often ranked as the healthiest state in America. However, for many Minnesotans, high quality health care and high health status are still elusive. In particular, several racial and ethnic minority groups in Minnesota experience higher rates of disease and premature death than white...
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Despite evidence that hospital use of licensed practical nurses (LPNs) declined in the 1990s, the current registered nurse (RN) shortage has prompted interest in LPNs as substitutes for RNs. Hospitals, being the dominant employer of RNs, have an economic incentive to use less expensive LPNs as...
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In most regions of California, there is now a shortage of registered nurses, and shortages will grow over the next 25 years. This report presents forecasts of supply and demand for RNs in regions of California. A previous report estimated future supply and demand for RNs statewide, finding a...
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LPNs may be able to help fill some of the gaps caused by the nursing shortage, but little research has been conducted on the demographic characteristics of LPNs, their education and scope of practice, and the demand for their services, all of which vary from state to state. In 2002 and 2003, the...
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The workforce providing noninstitutional personal assistance and home health services tripled between 1989 and 2004, according to U.S. survey data, growing at a much faster rate than the population needing such services. During the same period, Medicaid spending for such services increased...
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The nursing shortage has stimulated renewed attention to understanding factors that may enhance the recruitment of students into nursing programs and the retention of registered nurses in the workforce. Many activities have been initiated to address the shortage of nurses, including increasing...
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OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of changes in relative health maintenance organization (HMO) penetration on changes in the physician-to-population ratio in California counties when changes in the economic conditions in California counties relative to the U.S. average are taken into account...