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.
- 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...
- Respiratory care practitioners (RCPs) comprise a critical sector of the allied health care workforce though the profession is not well understood or highly visible to the public, even though RCPs are very involved with direct patient care. This issue brief examines this workforce in California...
- PURPOSE: To create a framework for teaching the knowledge and skills of practice-based learning and improvement to medical students and residents based on proven, effective strategies. METHOD: The authors conducted a Medline search of English-language articles published between 1996 and May 2001,...
- The clinical laboratory workforce comprises a critical sector of the healthcare workforce, and as with other types of healthcare workers such as registered nurses and pharmacists, there have been documented shortages of these workers for several years. This issue brief examines this workforce in...
- With 65,000 practitioners nationwide, chiropractic is the third largest “primary” health profession in the US (behind medicine and dentistry). This issue brief examines the chiropractic workforce in California. Beginning with its history and recent growth, the report looks into supply, demand and...
- California has a considerable and increasing need for interpretive services in health care. Currently one in every five Californians, over 6 million people, qualify as Limited English Proficient (LEP) and could be expected to benefit directly from improved interpretive services and the attendant...
- Minimum Staffing Ratios: The California Workforce Initiative Survey
- The pharmacy technician profession is experiencing rapid change and growth, mirroring changes in the pharmacy profession and in pharmaceutical treatment. This issue brief examines the growth and evolution of this profession as it has emerged over the last 10 years in retail, hospital, and other...
- Over the past two decades there has been a growing call for parity between mental and physical health care. Mental health services have been stigmatized, provided unsystematically, and they came late to the third party reimbursement process. Today the field is still beset by a vast array of often...
- This report provides data on the demographics of the PHN workforce in five counties in California; the educational preparation of the PHN workforce; the job market and employment issues for the PHN workforce; and the scope of PHN practice. Although the study was limited to five counties, these...
- Public health nurses (PHNs) make up the largest group of public health workers and are important health care providers for a variety of underserved populations, yet data about PHN demographics and practice are limited. This report provides data on the demographics of the PHN workforce in five...
- As health care in California continues to experience major changes and challenges, it is important to periodically check the pulse of one key group of participants in this system: the state’s physicians. This report presents the results from the 2001/2002 UCSF California Physician Survey. The...
- Policy brief summarizing findings from site visits and interviews with heatlh care executives and primary care physicians in six rural communities in California.
- Legislative calls for new methodologies to identify dentally underserved areas are an acknowledgement of the growing concern that the existing Dental Health Professional Shortage Area (DHPSA) designation criteria are outdated and ineffective. This report explores the history of DHPSAs, critiques...