Moving the Needle: Challenges in Meeting Nevada's Health Workforce Needs
Nevada has made progress in growing its licensed health workforce over the past decade, but demand continues to outpace supply due to rapid population growth, aging demographics, and other factors. This policy brief offers a snapshot of current and projected health workforce supply and demand needs and provides parameters for the study of possible policy remedies to increase the supply and address the geographic imbalance of the state’s health workforce.
Key Data Points
Despite increases in physicians, nurses, dentists, and other professionals, Nevada still falls short of national averages in population-to-provider ratios. These shortages, especially in rural and frontier areas, limit access to care and threaten the state’s ability to meet the health needs of its diverse and aging population. To simply meet the average national population-to-provider rates for 2025, Nevada would need an estimated additional:
Currently, there are about 2.2 million Nevadans, about 65 percent of the state’s population, who live in a federally designated primary medical care health professional shortage area (HPSA). 91.3 percent of Nevadans live in a designated mental health professional shortage area. Regional variation only makes the problem worse, with rural areas facing the steepest provider gaps.
Aside from provider shortages across the state, changing healthcare needs among Nevada citizens adds to the challenge. Other forces, like increasing chronic disease treatment and management needs due to an aging population, put additional strain on existing resources.
Meanwhile, the health workforce also faces difficulty with retention, burnout, and migration patterns, particularly among professionals with higher education.
Economic Impact
The health care sector plays a critical role in overall local and regional economic development and diversification efforts in Nevada, and workforce gaps may pose barriers to economic growth. Ambulatory care practices, hospitals, and nursing and residential care facilities have historically been underdeveloped in Nevada, with fewer employees compared to the national average. This makes it difficult for both public and private sectors to attract and keep businesses in the state.
Future Considerations
Historically, workforce development initiatives have fallen into one of three solution types:
- Grow our own workforce: Expand existing workforce pipelines in medical, nursing, and other health care education programs in Nevada, for example.
- Stretch the existing health care workforce: These solutions include maximizing the current workforce through telehealth technologies and greater use of non-physician clinicians and support staff.
- Recruit and retain health care workers from other jurisdictions: These policy measures target the available health workforce in other states and countries, such as participation in interstate licensure compacts, reciprocity agreements, J-1 visa programs, and others.
To develop further evidence-based policy options, further study is needed and should address these key questions:
What is the cost – both economically for the state and to the health care system – of doing nothing?
How does the cost add up in terms of: health outcomes, direct economic impact (e.g. reduced work productivity), indirect economic impact (e.g. consumer spending), and other factors resulting from inaction?
Which of Nevada’s health care workforce development policies (past and current) have produced the greatest impact in meeting demand? How do they compare to other jurisdictions?
What is the cost-benefit analysis, taking into consideration both the cost to implement and the return on investment, for available policy recommendations?
Read and download the full policy brief below.
Questions about our research? Contact us at info@guinncenter.org.