A new report shows that that employer demand far exceeds the supply of workers in six key nursing and allied health fields, which will have “substantial and unsustainable consequences” for the state’s healthcare sector and economic opportunity.

Critical Shortages Ahead: Aligning the Nursing and Allied Health Education Pipeline with Growing Employer Demand was produced in partnership by the MassINC Policy Center, MHA, the Massachusetts Association of Community Colleges, and the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation

The six target occupations featured in the report are: licensed practical nurses, associate degree registered nurses, medical/clinical laboratory technicians, respiratory therapists, surgical technologists, and radiologic technologists/radiographers.

While the shortage of workers grows, so has the desire of students to enter the healthcare field; the number of qualified students seeking education for these occupations from Massachusetts community colleges exceeds expected programmatic capacity by at least two to one, according to the report. Community college programs for the six occupations currently draw about 4,500 applicants, but they only have the capacity to enroll around 2,200 students.

The imbalance is most severe for radiological technologists, where programs have five qualified applicants for each available seat. Also of concern, large geographic gaps in education capacity exacerbate the workforce shortage in some parts of the state, the report found.

While the report acknowledges the current, ongoing efforts to build the workforce, it concludes that more action is needed. Specifically, the report calls for increasing the number of clinical placements and clinical educators by, among other things:

• Addressing faculty compensation;
• Creating a state regulatory environment supportive of expanding nurse education capacity; and
• Developing “longitudinal data systems” to follow students through education, licensing, and into the workforce.

The report data was collected from surveys of certificate and degree programs associated with the six target occupations, as well as surveys of human resources leaders from acute care hospitals and long-term care providers, supplemented by data collected from federal and state sources.

“These nursing and allied health professionals are vital members of both acute and post-acute care teams, and essential to hospital operations,” said Kim Stevenson, MHA’s director of workforce and clinical affairs. “The joint report gives us a first-of-its-kind look at the gaps and the barriers in creating these positions, and recommendations for how we can work collectively to find solutions to bring better balance to the supply and demand for caregivers.” 

Educators and providers identified three key obstacles to expanding enrollment to meet student demand: insufficient clinical placements, faculty and program leadership shortages, and state regulatory barriers for nursing

The inability to educate and train the next generation of healthcare workers is leading to three troubling developments, according to the report:

• First, “In occupations facing severe labor shortages, persistent turnover creates a costly cycle that undermines the quality, accessibility, and affordability of care.”
• That leads to the second problem – the high cost of temporary labor. “Survey respondents for both acute and long-term care organizations reported a combined $232 million in annual spending on temporary agency staff,” the report notes. “Extrapolating from these figures to all Massachusetts employers, the actual agency spend for these six occupations alone likely exceeds $450 million.”
• Finally, the critical shortages of key healthcare workers results in the difficult to quantify “lost economic opportunity” for students, who don’t have a chance to participate in meaningful, well-paying jobs and often don’t have a fallback position

“Massachusetts is world-renowned in the field of healthcare, and yet we are facing a dire workforce shortage in some of the most critical healthcare occupations,” said William Heineman, president, North Shore Community College and chair of the Community College Council of Presidents. “The Massachusetts Community Colleges are grateful to have partnered with the MassINC Policy Center, the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association, and the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation to identify existing barriers and brainstorm solutions to ensure that we are meeting the demands of the field. This collaboration is exactly what is needed to maintain Massachusetts’ reputation as a leader in the industry moving forward.”