For America to build and retain the workforce to serve our growing health care needs, our lawmakers must apply 3 strategies.

America needs to grow and diversify its workforce

Labor shortages and burnout are often worse in communities experiencing health disparities, which are historically communities of color, lower-income communities, and rural communities.

These communities not only need more health care workers, they would also significantly benefit from (and, frankly, deserve) a workforce that reflects the demographic and social characteristics of the population. Volumes of research show the importance of this.

For patients, having doctors and other clinicians who, through lived experience or learned cultural competence, share or understand their background is critical. Being cared for by someone who can relate to patients and stand in their shoes is essential to building the necessary trust to improve health. For workers, a staff that appropriately reflects the community with which they identify can help address feelings of isolation, misunderstanding, and burnout.

At Kaiser Permanente, we’re providing clinical education opportunities to address the workforce shortage, with a focus on health equity.

Specifically, we focus on the exorbitant cost of education and the daunting educational time commitment — issues that especially impact people coming from underserved communities, where resources to invest in the future are often limited or unavailable.

Our equity commitment is reflected in enrollment at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, where students currently attend tuition-free, and we have one of the most diverse student bodies in the country.
The Kaiser Permanente School of Allied Health Sciences has an exceptionally diverse student body, driven in part by our meaningful scholarships.
Our Mental Health Scholars Academy provides financial assistance, mentoring, networking, and flexible scheduling to allow existing Kaiser Permanente employees from other fields to transition into new careers in mental health. Two-thirds of students are people of color, and almost half are bilingual, helping to meet an acute shortage in multilingual therapists.

Policymakers need to support a team-based approach to care

America may be facing a doctor shortage, but that problem can be partly mitigated if health care organizations free up doctors’ time from tasks that others can perform to allow more patients to be seen more quickly. Examples are when pharmacists help patients review their medications or when nonclinical staff members help patients stay on track with a care plan. Several studies suggest that care approaches like these also reduce clinician burnout.

Because of our integrated care model, Kaiser Permanente already implements this team-based approach at scale. But we need policymakers to understand and support this approach, so they can advance legislation that fosters, not hampers, health care professionals working together, and individuals practicing at the top of their licenses — that is, to highest extent of their education, training, and experience.

Meanwhile, regulators responsible for professional licensure could be more flexible in their training requirements. Doing so would allow more health care professionals to practice sooner, and would create more opportunities for those who do not have the time or money to enable them to pursue extended training.

For example, in California, associate clinical social workers are issued licenses after they have received their master’s degree. People with these limited licenses can work, in a more narrow and supervised role, while earning their required clinical hours. We encourage other states to explore approaches that accelerate hiring while maintaining safety and quality.

Our country must lean on technology and innovation

Flexibility in how, where, and when care is provided is key to reducing clinician burnout, increasing patient access, and creating higher-quality outcomes.

For example, expanding the use of telehealth can reduce clinical staffing loads and enable more flexible scheduling for staff.

Telehealth adoption skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to temporary federal policy changes that are set to expire in 2024. Policymakers should make these telehealth policies permanent, especially policies that ensure phone-only visits are covered for people without reliable internet access.

A focus on new hiring is not enough. America must build a larger, more diverse health care workforce while executing on strategies that support teamwork and flexibility. If we do, we will not only recover from the disruption of the pandemic, we will meet the needs and expectations of patients — both the groups who had been accustomed to the best of the U.S. health system, and those who deserve but have been denied that experience in the past.