An aging population is one of the greatest challenges facing Wisconsin’s healthcare system.
As the baby boomer generation reaches retirement, it means a large population that tends to require more care. It also means nurses, doctors, and other healthcare staff are retiring.
Wisconsin Hospital Association’s Senior Vice President of Workforce and Clinical Practice Ann Zenk says this is a statewide issue.
“As our population ages, we’re continuing to see activity increase also. Not just more outpatient visits, but more hospital stays. And hospital care is more intense than outpatient care. It requires a larger workforce. So we’re also seeing again in the number of employees that hospitals have to have, the size of the workforce,” said Zenk.
Zenk said the pandemic has brought some solutions to the issue.
“COVID showed us just how fast we could grow our workforce, but also the solutions that were there when we couldn’t grow fast enough to keep up with the surge. Those COVID lessons we’ve learned,” said Zenk. “State and federal emergency orders helped give out of state licensed professionals into the state faster. They helped us grow new entry level workers like care assistants and nurse aids. Healthcare leaders implemented retention and resilience strategies to keep the workforce they had.”
She warns too many regulations can also create more burdens that drive people out of the industry.
“When COVID came, CMS calculated the burden of satisfying federal, just federal, COVID-19 reporting requirements and found that it was a staggering 2 million hours for the hospital workforce in just a six month timeframe. We could have used those hours at the beside,” said Zenk.
WHA says the state can build on this to help the healthcare workforce grow.
It’s encouraging providing clear pathways to jobs and careers, promoting flexible in workforce policy that meets community needs, and strengthen public health and emergency preparedness.
You can view the full report here.
