Digital Health: Friend or Foe of Workforce Shortages?
By Julie Viola, Philips Healthcare
As we launch the Decade of Healthy Ageing, the Global Coalition on Aging recognizes the critical importance of digital health in achieving the Decade’s healthy aging goals. We are proud to launch our blog series that will help guide ideas, policy, and behaviors with this first post by Julie Viola, MHA, Philips Healthcare, and Chair, Digital Health Working Group, Global Coalition on Aging.
Workforce shortages: this is a theme and source of pain across the globe, from the US and the UK to the EU and parts of Asia. A recent EY survey of more than 16,200 employees globally found that more than half would consider ditching their job after the pandemic if they weren’t offered enough flexibility on where and when they work.[1] These shortages are especially painful in the healthcare sector where significant gaps already existed, especially in the United States. Retention and signing bonuses were (and still are) commonplace, and student loan forgiveness and scholarships for healthcare careers have also been options for years before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
In the present and post-pandemic world, the workforce shortage in healthcare is of dire concern. As the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently said in a report, “a shortage of nurses endangers quality of care and places patients at risk for increased illness and death. A long-term shortage could undermine the American healthcare system and emerge as a prominent public health issue.”[2]
The following statistics underscore the challenge:
· According to McKinsey, 22 percent of nurses say they may leave their current positions. Of those, 60 percent said they were more likely to leave since the pandemic began, driven by factors like insufficient staffing, heavy workload, and the emotional toll.[3]
· Of the 4 million physicians in the US, as many as 500,000 will be either retiring or leaving the profession by the end of 2021.
· The AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) projects a shortage of between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians in the US by 2034, including shortfalls in both primary and specialty care.
While these statistics are daunting, we believe there is reason to be bullish on finding new solutions to meet the overwhelming demand for healthcare professionals, especially by tapping into the power of digital health technologies.
The pandemic has highlighted what’s possible, including a few surprises. In a recent podcast, Dr. Olivia Okereke, Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard Chan School and Director of Geriatric Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, pointed to older adults’ rapid adoption of technology during the pandemic: “They had to acquire new skills in technology. The fact that they enhanced their facility with using technology actually increased their sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy. They had a positive experience because, wow, they learned this new thing and now they can do it.”[4]
So, the questions become:
1. Where can we leverage technology when there is a gap in the workforce, versus the areas and activities that require a face-to-face presence?
2. How can we empower older adults to have a positive experience with health technologies, building their confidence and helping them achieve their priorities?
3. Will the use of technology like remote patient monitoring (RPM), video visits, and wearables truly alleviate demands on clinicians?
4. Who is responsible for funding the infrastructure to support the needed bandwidth and ensure no one is left behind based on location or socio-economic means? How can we measure that it is delivering impact?
I said in the title of this blog: is digital health a friend or foe? I, for one, believe it is a friend, but only if there is the proper support to ensure it is not yet another channel that clinicians and health professionals have to manage in the current environment.
For starters, can we as a global economy and national governments evaluate who is licensed or approved to have oversight? Meaning, is there opportunity for upskilling health care providers and raising the height of their licensure?
There are a number of potential solutions — we just have to shape and refine them. Perhaps medical professionals in the military who move from active duty to the civilian market could have more ability to deliver care than they do today. Maybe EMTs could be trained on clinical decision support (CDS) tools in a hospital setting when they no longer want to be on the road delivering care via ambulance and house calls. Or maybe healthcare informaticists could do more in the cloud to grow their reach and impact.
We want to hear from you: what do you think?
