A diverse health care workforce will help to increase access to quality care and address disparities in care that impact certain racial and ethnic populations.
The affordable care act will bring some 30 million uninsured Americans into a health care system already grappling with an acute need for primary care providers and an aging population with more complex, chronic health problems.
Access to primary care is in jeopardy because of an acute shortage of primary care physicians.
The most common childhood disease in the U.S. is dental caries (or cavities), which can – if untreated – lead to pain, inability to concentrate and absence from school.
Most health care providers today were educated in silos with only those from their own profession.
With more people expected to rely on the American health care system in the near future, there is an urgent need to develop new skills among the health care workforce and attract others to health care professions, especially in areas related to primary care.
Increasing and modernizing the health care workforce is a major goal of the ACA. The health reform law contains dozens of provisions related to health care workforce issues including strengthening primary care through payment reform, academic and financial assistance programs and examining the changing role of front-line health care workers like nurse practitioners who are increasingly providing primary care to medically undrserved communities.
In all, 36.8 percent of nurses have bachelor's degrees (up from 22.3 percent in 1980), while 36.1 percent of nurses have associate degrees (up from 17.9 percent in 1980).
Read moreThere are over 800,000 practicing physicians and residents currently in the United States, but only 32 percent designate themselves principally as primary care practitioners (PCPs), namely, practitioners of family medicine, general internal medicine, and general pediatrics.
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