Avoiding the health care talent shortage: tips and strategies that work.

• Author: Laforest, Sara
• Position: HEALTH & MEDICINE

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Health care is big business in Alaska. That's the good news. But big has its challenges: finding and keeping talent to support the growing demand for health care workers. It's reported there are shortages in all 119 health care occupations in Alaska, and the statewide shortage for all health care workers is estimated to be 10.3 percent. These statistics don't include military-related and self-employed health care workers and professionals.

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To compound this is:

* An aging health care work force

* Recruitment challenges

* An aging population that will require more Gare

* More patients ("pioneers") staying in state to receive care

* The increasing cost to provide health care

The prescription has been to find ways to provide more health care workers to address the growing demand for health care. While this is a reasonable solution, in the long-term it is not a sustainable one. We do not and will not argue that there is not a need for more health care workers; our focus is that more health care workers alone will not address the pressing socio-economic issues facing the health care industry.

Health care executives are faced with two key challenges:

1. How to address the growing need for health care due in part to an aging population.

2. How to do this in a cost-effective manner in a talent-short environment, with the looming retirements of current health care workers.

   One approach could be to change the current health care model. For example, to transition from an acute care focused-approach to a chronic care-focused approach. While this is easy to say, it represents a major shift in focus for the health care industry. It requires notable change, and will require health care leaders to plan, design and implement new health care models.

   And change (that is, good and effective change) requires leadership, and not just at the executive level. It requires leadership at the middle-management level. And it is this critical middle that represents a key ingredient in a health care change model. Why? Executives develop strategy; middle managers execute strategy. Without talented, dedicated and capable middle-management leadership, health care change will lag and the promise will fall short of reality.

   In a talent-constrained environment, one impact is finding clinical leaders at the operating unit and director level. In pharmacy, for example, (which has a 24 percent vacancy rate--51 percent at the tribal...