Addressing Workforce Challenges in Healthcare Calls for Proactive Leadership

The challenges that healthcare leaders face are many, and workforce challenges are among the most important. For most healthcare entities, the workforce is their largest expense. Fortunately, many issues can be avoided with proper planning and review.Workforce planning is both a science (analysis) and an art (execution). It comprises a set of business processes for analyzing the supply and demand of talent in an organization and determining how that supply and demand might change over time. Turnover rates, retirement projections, and retention data are some of the tools commonly used in the workforce planning process. Because the increase in healthcare jobs is expected to outpace growth in all other fields and industries, recruitment and retention will be matters of special interest to all healthcare leaders during the next several years.