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.
- 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 and finds a current and widening gap between the supply of and demand for RNs through at...
- Californians speak a multitude of languages. In 2000, California ranked first in the U.S. in percent of the population speaking English less than “very well”. With 20% of the general population and 25% of school-age children of limited English proficiency, concerns are rising that many Californians...
- The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis of the Bureau of Health Professions in the Health Research and Services Administration commissioned the New York Center for Health Workforce Studies at the SUNY School of Public Health to conduct a study of the public health workforce. The study...
- Advocates have pressed for legislation mandating improvements in nurse staffing for at least a decade. Recent research publications have established a strong link between nurse staffing and the quality of patient care. These studies suggest that legislation that increases nurse staffing has the...
- The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Bureau of Health Professions contracted with the University of California at San Francisco Center for the Health Professions to conduct a study of the clinical laboratory workforce. The...
- The author examines the history and early implementation of specific minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in all units of acute-care hospitals in California. After reviewing preliminary forecasts of the effects of the ratios, the effects of the regulations in the first few months of their implementation...
- This study examines the demand, supply, utilization, and scope of practice of LPNs in the United States. Particular attention is paid to educational issues, career mobility, geographic distribution, and the ability of LPNs to substitute for registered nurses.
- Objective: To validate physicians' self-reported intentions to leave clinical practice and the American Medical Association (AMA) Masterfile practice status variable as measures of physician attrition, and to determine predictors of intention to leave, and actual departure from, clinical practice....
- OBJECTIVE: The author reviews the causes of nursing shortages and surpluses and examines data from California hospitals to demonstrate how these cycles are expressed in the demand for and wages of nurses. BACKGROUND: Nursing shortages have been reported cyclically for more than 50 years in the...
- Report that summarizes findings from literature on successful strategies for increasing the numbers of physicians practicing in medically underserved areas.
- The author reviews the causes of nursing shortages and surpluses and examines data from California hospitals to demonstrate how these cycles are expressed in the demand for and wages of nurses. Nursing shortages have been reported cyclically for more than 50 years in the United States. There has...
- This brief provides an overview of an emerging and unique workforce in California. Community health workers (CHWs) and promotores are public health professionals who carry out a variety of health promotion, case management, and service delivery activities at the community level. This profession...
- This article reports on an audit of clinical supervision in one primary care trust (PCT). Data were collected by telephone interviews with 44 respondents from a range of professions occupying different clinical and managerial grades in the organization. Clinical supervision was varied both in terms...
- The problem of access to dental care services gained national attention following the publication of the first ever Surgeon General’s report on Oral Health. However, dental policies and programs implemented over the past several decades have done little to change the practice patterns of dental...
- Central to efforts to increase access to dental care has been a focus on the supply, distribution and diversity of a workforce willing and able to provide care for underserved populations. While there are no definitive numbers, between 3 and 9 million Californians are lacking access to care or have...
- California citizens and lawmakers should be aware of how the state's physicians have responded to the dramatic changes in health care in the United States over the past 25 years. This report presents important new findings about long-range trends in physician supply in California, as well as a...
- Language and cultural barriers to medical care are a large and growing problem in the United States. A number of federal and state laws, as well as professional and accreditation standards, require and encourage health care organizations to provide culturally and linguistically accessible health...
- OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to describe the relationship between nurse staffing and owner type or specific corporate owner in California acute care hospitals. BACKGROUND: Little empirical data exist regarding nurse staffing as it relates to owner type or specific corporate owner. With...
- Medical assistants are multi-skilled health care practitioners who are trained to assist physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners with administrative and/or clinical duties in an ambulatory care setting; they are an integral part of any medical practice. This issue brief provides...
- Public health nursing (PHN) practice is defined by an emphasis on population health issues rather than individually focused clinical interventions, but the actual scope and focus of PHN practice have not been well documented. The purpose of this survey was to investigate the practice activities,...
- This report provides a descriptive overview of the nursing labor market with a focus on the institutions and regulations that affect the labor market. The authors provide in-depth information about the demand for nurses, and explore the types of health care providers that employ nurses and the...
- EMTs and Paramedics are essential members of the health care workforce. They are an intrinsic part of California's and the nation's emergency medical system. This issue brief examines this workforce in California where the number of EMT’s and Paramedics per capita are below the U.S. average. Lack...
- The intent of the Caregiver Training Initiative (CTI) was to increase the number of health caregivers in the State of California. This initiative, which is part of the State’s Aging with Dignity Initiative, provided $25 million through competitive grants to twelve Regional Collaboratives statewide...
- In recent years the U.S. media have been reporting a shortage of registered nurses (RNs). In theory, labor-market shortages are self-correcting; wage increases will bring labor markets into equilibrium, and policy intervention is not necessary. In this paper we develop a simple forecasting model...
- Part I of the 2002 Wage and Vacancy Study appeared in the September issue of Laboratory Medicine.1 That report focused on the response rates by laboratory type and the wages associated with 12 categories of clinical laboratory staff. The detailed methodology related to the design of the...
- Most analyses of California's nursing shortage find that too few nurses are being educated to meet future demand. Coffman and Spetz (1999) estimate that state nursing programs need to educate an additional 3,600 students per year between 2000 and 2010, and 5,000 more per year between 2010 and 2020...
- A number of federal and state laws address the need to provide health care in a language that the patient understands. This two-page overview of major California and Federal lists requirements for health care providers to provide language assistance to patients who require these services. The...
- The diagnostic imaging professions provide vital services in the modern health care system, and as with other types of healthcare workers such as registered nurses and clinical laboratory scientists, there is a current labor shortage within these professions. This issue brief examines this...
- The 2002 Wage and Vacancy Report will spanned 2 issues of Laboratory Medicine. This issue focuses on the salary data. The October issue will focus on hiring practices and vacancies. Full Publication
- PURPOSE: Little is known about whether different types of physician and nonphysician primary care clinicians vary in their propensity to care for underserved populations. The objective of this study was to compare the geographic distribution and patient populations of physician and nonphysician...