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Envisioning an ideal health workforce data system for California
Envisioning an ideal health workforce data system for California
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Coffman, Janet M., author
Spetz, Joanne, author - Contributor(s):
- University of California, San Francisco. Healthforce Center, issuing body.
- Publication:
- San Francisco, CA : University of California, San Francisco, Healthforce Center, July 24, 2019
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Data Systems
Health Workforce
Health Occupations -- education
California
United States - Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- In early 2019, the California Future Health Workforce Commission released a report that contains 27 recommendations for improving the supply, distribution, diversity, knowledge, and skills of the state's health workforce. State legislators have introduced legislation that would implement some of these recommendations, and the governor's budget contains several items that would advance them. Due to the limitations of data available to describe the health workforce in California, the commission had to base some of its recommendations on outdated and incomplete information. A robust health workforce data system is needed to assess the impact of implementing the commission's recommendations and to monitor trends in supply and demand for health care workers and health professions education. At present, data describing California's health workforce and health workforce education must be pieced together from multiple sources. California's Healthcare Workforce Clearinghouse, which was established under Health and Safety Code Subsection 128052 (Senate Bill 139, Chapter 522, Statutes of 2007), was envisioned as a central repository of information about the supply and demand for health care workers and trends in health professions education. However, at present the clearinghouse disseminates only state- and county-level data for a limited number of measures of supply and demand for just eight licensed health professions. The only data available to describe other professions are (1) data collected by licensing boards, which can only be used to count the number of professionals by geographic location (and are relevant only to licensed professions), and (2) estimates of demand produced by the California Employment Development Department (EDD). For nearly all health professions aside from nursing, education-related data must be obtained from national sources. The data that are currently available through the clearinghouse also do not include all of the variables that the US Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and other national organizations recommend be contained in a "Minimum Data Set" for health workforce analysis. Specifically, they do not include data describing health care workers' gender, race/ethnicity, professional education, specialty, hours worked, or practice setting. Several other states have health workforce data systems that are more robust than California's clearinghouse in one or more respects. Some states' data systems incorporate more detailed information about licensed health professionals than California's clearinghouse, or include additional health professions. Several states' data systems include data from sources other than licensing boards and state labor agencies. In addition, several states' web-based portals contain interactive tools that enable users to create customized visualizations of data or download datasets. An ideal health workforce data system for California would encompass data on supply and demand for workers in all health occupations as well as data on health professions education. All licensing boards should collect the data elements contained in HRSA's Minimum Data Set. Existing data describing numbers of jobs and wages should be augmented with additional measures of demand for health care workers, such as vacancy and turnover rates. Surveys similar to those administered by the Board of Registered Nursing should be administered for all health professions education programs in California, so that the data system will contain timely and accurate information on the various education pipelines for health care workers. An ideal health workforce data system should also encompass multiple products and services, including a web portal, fact sheets, reports, public-use datasets, and tools that can be used to query the data system and visualize data. Mechanisms should also be established that allow personnel operating the data system to respond to requests from the California State Legislature, state agencies, colleges and universities, media outlets, and other interested parties. An ideal data system could be housed in the California Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA), the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), or a university-based research center with expertise in the health care workforce. Based on the experience of other states, the most successful model is likely to be a partnership among all three of these entities and other entities that collect health workforce data, such as EDD.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (17 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 101764309 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101764309