Millions health care workers lost their jobs during the first peak of the pandemic when clinics closed temporarily and hospitals postponed surgeries to prevent the spread of the COVID-19. Although most of those jobs returned by the fall of 2020 and the job market continued to improve, health care employment is still lower than pre-pandemic…
The National EMS Scope of Practice Model is a blueprint for states to develop scopes of practice for emergency medical services (EMS) practitioners. It is intended to reduce inconsistencies between states and provide a basis from which national standards of care and performance for each level of EMS practitioner can be developed. Such standards can…
Health workforce research and planning consists of using supply data at multiple levels (ie, national, state, local, etc). Unfortunately, the variation in the allied health workforce means that supply data for these workers is less likely to be easily available. This report compares allied health workforce supply data (including 9 separate occupations) across multiple years…
Nonstandard work arrangements includes overlapping concepts of: 1) contingent work (based on self-employment status, length of work, method of payment, and connection to employer), 2) alternative work (ie, temporary agency worker, on-call worker, contract company worker, and independent contractor), and 3) electronically-mediated work (sometimes referred to as “gig work”). Between 1995 and 2015 the healthcare…
The primary role of the clinical laboratory workforce is to collect and analyze biological specimens to provide patients and medical providers information for preventing, diagnosing, treating, and managing disease. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical role that the clinical laboratory workforce plays in the healthcare system. This policy brief focuses on 6 clinical lab…
The Patient-Driven Payment Model (PDPM) is a new reimbursement policy for skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) that was implemented by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in 2019. PDPM disincentivizes provision of intensive physical and occupational therapy, which has caused concerns that declines in therapy staffing may negatively impact patient outcomes. Therapy staff includes physical…
The health care industry lost 1.5 million jobs between March and April 2020, the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. Losses spread across the major health care sectors of hospitals (22.7%), ambulatory care settings (39.6%), and long-term care (LTC) facilities (37.7%). The job loss in LTC facilities (eg, skilled nursing facilities, residential care,…
The traditional role of physical therapists is to prescribe exercises and provide hands-on care to help patients develop, maintain, and restore functional ability that may be limited by injuries, aging, and chronic or progressive diseases. A primary impact of the COVID-19 emergency on physical therapists has been an involuntarily reduction of employment due to a…
Pharmacists are increasingly recognized as crucial members of the health care team. To date, no single source of information exists that best characterizes the increasingly complex nature of the pharmacist workforce. Improving awareness of the potential roles of pharmacists would help to more effectively incorporate them into the health care team and improve care. This…
Pharmacists provide a broad spectrum of services depending on their practice setting and scope-of-practice laws within their state. Lately, pharmacists have been increasingly used in a variety of ways, taking on roles such as medication therapy management, chronic disease management, patient education, health promotion, and disease prevention. To take on this surge in demand, states…
