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By JOHN KEENAN
UNMC Strategic Communications
The 2022 Health Workforce Report released by the University of Nebraska Medical Center shows that the number of nurses in Nebraska has increased significantly, and the number of pharmacists working modestly has increased since 2020. Despite these positive developments, rural areas in the country are still the necessary health of nursing professionals is lacking, and the aging of the health workforce in more disciplines threatens to exacerbate the current shortage.
This and other key findings of the study appear in the report “Nebraska Health Workforce Status: Update 2022.”
“When health workers work in rural areas, they help provide quality health care as close to home as possible. But they also create economic sustainability and vitality in the communities in which they live, “said Dr. Jeffrey P. Gold, Chancellor of the UNMC. “The need has never been clearer: we need to increase access to health care systems in rural Nebraska to improve the quality of life for all our communities, support economic sustainability and strengthen the number of health workers in the decades to come.”
The study, commissioned and funded by the Office of Rural Health Initiatives and the Nebraska Health Education Center Program (AHEC), used the latest data from the UNMC Health Professions and State of Nebraska. The report acknowledges the ongoing impact of the pandemic on the health workforce and that the shortage has worsened since the data was collected.
Studies have shown that roadmaps are important for proactively addressing current and expected deficits in rural and underserved communities, and that recruiting and training students from rural and underserved areas, and training them as close as possible to those communities, is a proven strategy to increase that they will return to those areas to practice.
Dr Andy Craig, a family medicine doctor in Minden and a graduate of the UNMC’s KHOP program, said it was important to identify and focus on students who wanted to be involved in rural healthcare. “Students who grew up in the countryside and want to stay in the countryside.
He pointed to efforts to expand medical education to the University of Nebraska on the Kearney campus as an important step in addressing the workforce and access to rural health care.
Pathway programs have helped in Nebraska, said Nicole Carritt, director of the UNMC Office of Rural Health Initiatives.
“Nearly 60 percent of the more than 700 graduates of the UNMC Rural Health Opportunities Program (RHOP) and the Kearney Health Opportunities Program (KHOP) practice in rural Nebraska,” Carritt said.
She added that recent support from the Nebraska legislature, including funding for the Nebraska Healthier Rural initiative, a project that will expand UNMC’s health care programs at UNK, improves those rural training opportunities.
Still, the challenges remain. The report identified one of the main areas of concern: the aging Nebraska health workforce. A significant proportion of Nebraska dentists (26.9%), licensed nurses (20.6%), pediatricians (20%), physicians (19.4%), optometrists (18.6%), and registered nurses (17, 2%) are in the pre-retirement age group. 61 years or older and may be in danger of leaving the workforce in the next five to 10 years. With the as yet unexplored consequences of the pandemic on the workforce, the need for innovation to boost the rural health workforce has only grown.
“The number of dental health workers has decreased since 2019,” Carritt said. “Thirteen of Nebraska’s 93 counties do not have primary care physicians, and 16 counties do not have pharmacists.
Based on these findings, the report’s recommendations included improving existing programs and educational initiatives.
“We need to encourage individuals from rural and urban areas with a lack of services to become health workers and practice health care in these communities, especially for health professions that show significant deficiencies,” Carritt said. “With the recent support of the legislature, the UNMC is in a position to continue to provide solutions to these challenges.
The report examined 20 professions of primary health care, from doctors and medical assistants to nurses, dentists and related health workers. He also looked at the gender, age, race and ethnicity of each health worker, as well as measured the number and rate of health workers per 100,000 people per district.