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The growing shortage of healthcare professionals in the U.S. should be no surprise to anyone who has been watching what’s going on with generations. The largest generation in decades is now solidly migrating into retirement, adding millions of people to the workload of the national healthcare system without a matching growth in trained service providers. As a result, a huge imbalance is in play.
Add into the mix the major changes and expansion of required coverage through the national health care reform now becoming law, and the demand has grown far bigger. In addition to all the Baby Boomers expecting their services, 30 million new persons are now entering the system as well, many who previously didn’t have coverage.
According to the New York Times, Congress initiated a special commission to solve the problem, along with the health care reform changes passed and enacted in the Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, the commission has never been funded, so while it was charged to plan and address the problem of provider shortage, it can’t get to work. It has no money to function, pay for staff, operate with, or produce any kind of studies. As a result, Congressional help promised has failed and been useless.
50 States, 50 Sets of Rules
Under the current system, states are the main regulatory power licensing and producing new healthcare providers. They do this through medical boards, physician boards and nurse licensing boards. However, with 50 different processes, the amount of new entries to the system depends on how hard or loose each state makes its requirements for licensing. While the medical industry has created licensing standards, states still independently call the shots.
In the meantime, the commission that was supposed to provide new national standards to pursue expansion of the number of medical provider resources sits idle. The main problem has been essentially a partisan one, with the Republicans in Congress doing what they can to stymie what they see is a Democrat initiative worthy of sinking. If the funding can’t get enacted, then the commission doesn’t happen and at least that part of the Affordable Care Act won’t work.
Unfortunately, the effect of the partisan fighting just contributes to the problems of a lack of professionals that affects everybody needing medical services, regardless of political leanings. Absent a major push to train new nurses, doctors, assistants and more, the system will continue to lumber along, with greater and greater backlogs of patients demanding services.
Based on the statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the demand for nurses is expected to grow 26 percent by 2020. Demands for doctors is slated by the government to be 24 percent. And medical assistants have the greatest growth at 31 percent by 2020. Only a centralized push by the federal government is going to change how the states behave, administering their neck of the woods without a coordinated approach. Otherwise, patient care is likely to get far worse with the above demand in the next eight years.