Health care worker shortage expected to get worse
Hospitals are facing a critical workforce shortage that will only get worse as the state's population grows.
A new report from the Wisconsin Hospital Association said that by 2010 hospitals will be competing with each other for a much smaller pool of workers to fill job vacancies.
The largest percentage of vacancies and the most difficult to fill are in therapist positions, according to the 2008 Health Care Workforce Report released Thursday by the WHA.
Slots for getting proper training fill quickly at colleges, so WHA Vice President Judy Warmuth said expanding slots in college training programs is critical to head off the anticipated shortage of health care professionals.
"We're starting to see some promising movement with a new pharmacy school in the planning stages, but at this point the demand for some key health care professionals is still increasing much faster than supply," Warmuth said.
Health care is the largest employer segment of the workforce in Wisconsin and consistently has new job openings, but the majority of the available jobs aren't new but are replacement positions for workers who leave, usually because of retirement.
The full workforce report is available at www.wha.org.
