Hospital staffing shortages have stabilized since the height of the pandemic but aren’t going away anytime soon, according to panelists at PBN’s April 4 Health Care Summit.
That’s in part because federal money that’s helped fill some of those openings is running out with no ready replacement.
But the good news is that state health care leaders are looking beyond the immediate, ongoing challenges for long-term solutions.
That includes boosting diversity in the workplace and working more aggressively at the high school level to promote health care job opportunities.
And panelist Sen. Pamela J. Lauria, D-Barrington, said state lawmakers are expected to consider the creation of a state medical school.
Brown University now has the state’s only medical school.
“We need to make sure that we have a place that’s affordable for Rhode Islanders to get that education” needed to fill the hundreds of local job openings in health care, she said.
It’s a worthy discussion, if the state is serious about building a reliable pipeline of health care workers.