Health Care Workforce for an Aging Society

Working with the Hartford Foundation, the American Geriatric Society and other foundations concerned with the aging of the population, the Institute of Medicine is undertaking a study designed to characterize precisely the kind of health workforce needed to care for an aging society.

The study, led by experienced IOM study director Clyde J. Behney, is using the usual IOM format, with a panel of 15 experts who will meet over a period of 15 months to consider questions such as:

• What are the national goals of health care for older Americans and how do they harmonize with the priorities of the larger American society?
• In view of these goals, what are the specific health needs of the aging population?
• What is the best deployment of the professional and non-professional health care workforce to meet these needs? How can physician and non-physician workforces provide optimal health care for the anticipated growth in the older population? What models of delivery promise to provide high quality care for an aging population?
• How should a professional healthcare workforce be recruited, educated and trained to provide this care and how should that process be financed? How can competency be measured? How can this needed workforce be recruited and retained?
• How can public programs, specifically Medicare and Medicaid, be structured to provide high value care to an older population?

The committee includes experts in medicine, nursing, social work, pharmacy, health care administration, health education, bioethics, economics, health care law and health care quality research. When the study is complete, the findings will be useful for a wide target audience which includes older Americans and their advocates, health care professional societies, educators of health care professionals, federal and state governments, public and private payers and purchasers of health care services.

Based on prior experience, IOM estimates that up to $1.8 million may be required to complete the study. The Macy contribution has assured a quick start. Other contributors include the Hartford Foundation, the Retirement Research Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, and AARP.