How the Healthcare Staff Shortage Affects Rural America
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Healthcare is an exploding industry that, in many ways, is threatening to come apart at the seams. The problem isn’t the quality of service or even access to insurance, so much as it is dealing with the rapidly increasing demand for healthcare professionals. To put it simply, there is a general shortage of trained individuals available to fill the numerous needs in hospitals and healthcare facilities throughout the United States. It’s becoming a more serious issue than many realize.
According to recent reports by CNN, a staggering 2.3 million new healthcare workers will be needed by 2025 in order to handle the correlating rising tide of demand, much of which will be created by the rapidly aging baby boomer population.
But if one digs a bit deeper, an even bigger problem emerges. A majority of places in the United States that lack an adequate number of healthcare professionals are located in rural areas. The epidemic has grown to such astounding proportions that the National Rural Health Association has gone so far as to declare the problem a “health care crisis with no end in sight.”
Looking at the facts, their declaration hardly comes as a surprise. From the perspective of healthcare professionals, working in larger cities makes much more sense from a compensation perspective alone.
The disadvantages and challenges for rural doctors don’t stop with the paycheck. Rural doctors are also typically isolated from the bustling medical scene of city centers, which can prevent them from having access to cutting-edge technology and keeps them at arm’s length from other professionals that they might otherwise have been able to network with and learn from.
All told, the career arc for a rural medical professional seems fairly bleak. Armed with that knowledge, it’s hard to blame young medical professionals for packing their bags and relocating to metropolitan areas, especially those who have astronomical student loan debt. Higher wages and access to the latest and greatest technological advances is too great a temptation for most young practitioners to ignore, and most of them don’t.
It’s interesting to note, too, that the problem isn’t just one that affects doctors. Nurses, health aides, and other medical staff positions are also suffering shortages. Specialization may be aggravating the situation, as students focus intensely on specific medical fields in the hopes of a better career. The sad side effect of this specialization is that it is leaving gaping holes in the ranks of the general practitioners.
While the crisis is certainly real and is being exacerbated every day, there are some solutions that could help ameliorate the problem.
Training a Larger Workforce
The growing shortage of workers hasn’t gone unnoticed, and many areas are working overtime to train more personnel to fill the growing disparity in the workforce. For example, in spite of the automation of things like medical records, an increasing number of nurses are still being trained as they continue to remain in high demand.
In addition, many states that have come under the pressure of higher life expectancy rates and the incoming Baby Boomer generation have helped ease the demand by adopting new laws allowing nurse practitioners to function more fully within the scope of their training.
Government Initiatives
As mentioned earlier, the government has made several pushes to facilitate the training of a larger healthcare workforce in the past. They have also been known to help in other employment related areas. Therefore it wouldn’t be out of the question to expect the government to attempt to address the growing healthcare staffing crisis in one way or another.
One way this could be done would be through better utilizing social workers in rural environments. Eighty percent of all social workers currently work in cities. But if more of these were sent into struggling rural areas, they could become ambassadors for the healthcare industry, helping equip those who are struggling with the ability to do things like access insurance and live healthier lifestyles.
From funding programs designed to train more professionals, to better utilizing social workers, to helping equip rural doctors with the latest and greatest medical technology, there are many ways for politicians to go about addressing the problem. However, if this is done, steps must be taken to ensure that both the quality and the integrity of any new medical professionals remains at an appropriately high level.
Telemedicine
Finally, there is the option of telemedicine, a trend that is growing in popularity. Using technology to communicate directly with nurses and doctors in order to ask questions and gather information can be a great way to avoid humdrum trips to the doctor’s office. This, consequently, leaves more room for those who are seriously ill to receive the attention they require.
While rural residents are currently feeling the pinch of the staffing shortage, the truth is, all of America is on a crash course with the same issue, with staffing shortages threatening to only get worse. But the problem is not hopeless, as long as it isn’t placed on the the back burner. If addressed in a timely manner, a combination of training new workers, better utilizing present resources and personnel, and actively applying cutting edge technologies as they become available can help to keep the situation at bay for the foreseeable future.
