Research & Insights

The workforce crisis

The battle for talent is underway, and organizations need to create environments that will attract and retain the workforce needed to grow. Explore our research on the state of the healthcare workforce to understand what workers want, develop strategies to win and retain talent, and maximize the effectiveness of your care teams.

Featured Insights

Reinventing clinical workforce strategy

Join our roundtable and dig into the root causes for why clinical staffing remains such a challenge and how leadership strategies need to be revised to build the future workforce.

Cheat Sheet

The state of the clinical workforce

The clinical workforce is at a crisis point across virtually all direct care roles. Here’s what healthcare industry leaders need to know.

Our Take

Becoming the physician employer of choice

Employers, including health systems, independent practices, aggregators, and staffing firms, will win physician talent when they provide physicians with meaningful autonomy, ample time, and seamless support to thrive as both doctors and people.

Blog Post

3 insights to better retain and recruit your clinical workforce

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing challenges to workforce stability, causing more staff members than ever to decide to leave their roles or industry. Before it’s too late, learn the three insights we uncovered to better retain and recruit your clinical workforce.

16 things CEOs need to know in 2023
4 health system growth archetypes
The future of hospital-based care
Payers 101

Tackle these challenges

Get smart fast
Recruit and retain
Improve well-being
Build diversity, equity, and inclusion
Develop leaders

Get smart fast

Nursing turnover, vacancy, and premium labor use are at all-time highs. Health systems must delineate the factors driving shortages across several nursing roles and tailor their workforce strategy accordingly.
By addressing administrative burdens and operational efficiency, healthcare leaders can prevent a physician shortage.

Recruit and retain

Physicians are burned out, so employers must strive to win physician talent.
Young nurses today have more employment opportunities than ever and face little to no penalty for changing jobs. To retain new, young employees, leaders must focus on skill development, hardwire a support network, and launch career planning.
It's time to stop thinking about how healthcare systems are "losing" staff to parenthood and to start actively supporting the parental roles of their employees in and outside of the workplace.

Improve well-being

In the wake of COVID-19, healthcare organizations must commit to restoring physical and emotional well-being, tackling burnout on two levels, and providing targeted baseline emotional support for the three types of emotionally charged scenarios that healthcare employees are likely to encounter in their careers:
- Trauma and grief
- Moral distress
- Compassion fatigue

Build diversity, equity, and inclusion

To be a destination workplace for talent from all backgrounds, identities, and perspectives, you must embed diversity and inclusion in every aspect of your talent management strategy.
Organizations with diverse workforces — in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, gender identity, culture, language, ability, and more — and inclusive cultures are stronger businesses.

Develop leaders

Individual interventions, such as training and coaching sessions, are not enough to cultivate resilient leaders. They must be paired with an organizational approach that addresses the environment in which leaders operate.
Nurse manager overload is not only bad for nurse managers, it’s even worse for their organizations.
To ensure nurse managers can lead as needed and oversee their units, organizations need to assess exactly how managers are using their time and determine what activities can be delegated and what support is necessary.

Quick reads from around the industry

Research

5 insights from Advisory Board’s 2022 clinician survey

To recruit, retain, and support frontline talent, leaders across the industry need to know what clinicians are thinking and how they are making career changes. Read the top five takeaways from our clinician survey and learn how you can better retain and recruit your clinical workforce.

Research

Build a diverse and sustainable workforce pipeline

Despite years of attention and investment, whole pools of talent are still underrepresented in the clinical workforce. This report shares three strategies to build a more diverse and sustainable clinical workforce.

Conversation Guide

Assess your staff member’s departure risk

Although staff turnover is inevitable across a manager’s career, you can reduce the risk of being caught off guard by a staff member’s departure. Use this conversation guide to prepare talking points for a focused and honest conversation about your staff member’s mindset.

Case Study

How Springfield Clinic’s ‘retirement chute’ helps plan for physician retirements

Most independent physician practices respond reactively to physician retirements when given a 90-day notice. See how Springfield Clinic’s “retirement chute” incentivizes physicians to share their retirement plans earlier, giving the practice more time to proactively plan and recruit a replacement physician.

Go deeper on our latest research

Nursing

Nurses are the largest labor force in hospitals. Their work is critical to any strategic objective. We provide research and tools to navigate your nursing workforce challenges.

Physicians

For most healthcare organizations, physicians are both the primary method of care delivery and the biggest investment. Understand the forces influencing the physician workforce.

Staff engagement and burnout

A strong, engaged workforce is crucial for successful organizations. We provide research and tools for leaders to battle staff burnout and build a resilient workforce.

Staffing and productivity

Leaders are charged with deploying staffing resources to support the delivery of safe, high-quality, and cost-effective patient care. We help you understand legacy and next-generation staffing models.

Clinical quality

We provide research and tools to optimize clinical outcomes and help clinicians provide the highest quality care possible.

Patient experience

In light of increased competition and consumer expectations, we provide research and tools to develop patient experience strategies that engage managers and staff to lead improvement initiatives.

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Experts

Monica Westhead

Managing director, Delivery system outcomes research

Monica leads cross-continuum quality research at Advisory Board. Her work explores the intersection of clinical and operational outcomes.

Carol Boston-Fleischhauer

Chief nursing officer

Carol is a nationally recognized nurse leader and provides expert guidance and thought leadership to senior clinical executives and teams.

Teresa O'Donoghue, BSN, RN, CCM, CPHQ, CPC-A

Expert partner

Teresa is an expert partner and registered nurse delivering high-impact learning experiences for healthcare executives and clinical leaders.

Sarah Hostetter

Managing director, Physician and medical group research

Sarah leads physician and medical group research at Advisory Board, analyzing how physician landscape dynamics will impact the industry.

We help leaders and future leaders in the healthcare industry work smarter and faster by providing provocative insights, actionable strategies, and practical tools to support execution.

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