The Future Healthcare Workforce

Four Strategic Solutions for Improvement and Resilience

The rising prevalence of chronic conditions, coupled with the lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, has brought the healthcare system’s critical role into sharp focus. A heightened demand for accessible, quality care has exposed vulnerabilities, particularly in workforce capacity.¹ Healthcare organizations now face a dual challenge: meeting increasing patient needs while contending with a significant and growing shortage of professionals across both clinical and non-clinical roles.

The healthcare workforce crisis demands a comprehensive, strategic response. In our experience working across healthcare organizations in the United States, we have found that each organization is unique in its strategy, population and workforce challenges. Four essential solutions to address these challenges include: (1) transforming care models, (2) building strong partnerships, (3) leveraging data-driven, human-centered technology and (4) cultivating a distinctive culture.

The Healthcare Workforce Shortage: A Growing Crisis

Both clinical and non-clinical roles are critical to sustaining the operational and financial viability of hospitals and health systems. Non-clinical roles such as revenue cycle management, IT and administrative support, establish the foundational infrastructure that drives efficiency, ensures financial stability and supports the seamless delivery of care. Together, clinical and non-clinical roles enable healthcare organizations to optimize resources, maintain compliance and enhance the overall patient experience, aligning operational success with clinical excellence.

Workforce shortages and related challenges are driven by various factors and result in specific symptoms for the organization. For clinical work, drivers include factors such as a demanding work environment, financial pressures and growing administrative burdens. According to the American Hospital Association, it is anticipated that the United States will face a shortage of 3.2 million healthcare workers by 2026, further compounding these difficulties.² Challenges presented by this phenomenon include unsatisfactory patient experiences resulting from a strain on hospital emergency departments and lack of access to primary care. For non-clinical roles, the drivers are largely tied to unique recruitment challenges, high turnover and a growing skills gap in the talent pool. Consequences of this include decreases in productivity and slow technology adoption rates among systems.

The workforce shortage is an urgent issue that is putting immense pressure on healthcare systems nationally. Addressing these challenges will be critical to maintaining the effectiveness and sustainability of healthcare organizations.

Below is a map of key drivers and their resulting symptoms for both clinical and non-clinical workforce shortages, to help you understand where your organization may be experiencing the greatest pressure. Identify the challenges that resonate with your current environment; by pinpointing these issues, you can better target improvement efforts and develop strategies for sustainable workforce solutions.

Clinical and Non Clinical Workforce Challenges

Source: FTI Consulting

Strategic Solutions to Address Workforce Shortages

An organization’s capacity for innovation is influenced by various factors, such as patient population, financial stability and other internal considerations. For example, while some organizations may choose to fully transform their operating model, others may adopt a more gradual, evolutionary approach. It is critical to evaluate the following four solutions within the context of your organization’s capabilities and capacity to ensure the successful execution of your workforce strategy.

Transformed Care Model: Innovating on Clinical Roles and Structure in the Hospital
Healthcare organizations must explore ways to expand roles for critical clinical staff. By scaling the scope of practice for these positions, organizations can alleviate some of the demand on clinicians and enhance care delivery and the work environment.

Additionally, investing in educational programs and partnerships with outside organizations such as universities can help grow the pipeline of new clinicians. This includes expanding capacity in medical, nursing and allied health programs and offering financial incentives for students to enter underserved fields.

Technological advancements enable care transformation, particularly data-driven decision-making and approvals controls. These innovations enhance the ease of quality diagnosis and treatment and facilitate the ability to leverage different clinical and non-clinical roles more effectively. Importantly, our experience has shown how existing technologies, such as electronic health record (“EHR”) systems, can be optimized to drive improvements, reducing the need for entirely new investments.

Robust Partnership Ecosystem: Offshoring and Outsourcing to Address Workforce Gaps
Offshoring and outsourcing non-clinical roles, as well as certain clinical support functions, can be an effective strategy to alleviate workforce shortages in healthcare organizations. For example, outsourcing behavioral health services to external providers has allowed healthcare systems to increase access to mental health care while reducing the burden on in-house clinicians.

By partnering with third-party providers, organizations can expand the availability of telehealth consultations and virtual care, addressing gaps in clinical staffing and improving patient access. Similarly, outsourcing administrative tasks, such as billing, coding and customer support, can free up internal resources to focus on core patient care functions. This approach not only reduces operational costs, but also enhances the overall efficiency of healthcare delivery.

Case Study: Helping a Leading Healthcare Organization Grow Sustainably

Situation: FTI Consulting was engaged by a leading healthcare delivery organization to review revenue cycle operations and technology and develop recommendations for a future state revenue cycle management (“RCM”) model that would accommodate rapid growth.

Our Impact:

FTI Consulting identified $15.6 million in financial impacts by year three of the transformation project, which included technology, workflow, staffing, outsourcing and vendor strategies.
The team determined that implementation of an insurance discovery vendor and denials management program would benefit annual net revenue, while the implementation of a vendor to automate the processing of incoming payments and correspondence would yield a net cost reduction.
Our experts identified that the billing platform in use created limitations for the client’s ability to achieve maximum productivity from internal workflows.

Our Role:

FTI Consulting identified manual efforts and inefficiencies in the technology environment that could be reduced with the implementation of a modernized billing platform.
Our experts identified cost-saving opportunities associated with expansion of the client’s outsourced coding volume and the implementation of outsourced business office functions.

Human Centered Technology: Innovating with Data-Driven Insights, Digital Tools and AI
The adoption of artificial intelligence and digital solutions can significantly impact workforce experience and efficiency. With increased access to new data sources and aggregation platforms, health systems have improved insights and actionable decision-making capabilities. Leveraging these better data-driven capabilities, health systems have improved clinical diagnosis and treatment results, alleviated administrative burden and driven an optimal consumer experience.

In some cases, the integration of technology that is designed by and for providers in the clinical setting — that which supports diagnosis, treatment, and prevention — has alleviated the burden on clinicians, providing them with seamless access to cutting-edge research and personalized treatments to aid in advancing patient care.

In other cases, digital and AI-powered tools can handle administrative tasks such as automated accounts receivable claims follow-up, predictive denials management or EHR documentation, enabling workers to focus more on higher level tasks and eliminating the need for some roles. For example, AI-driven patient intake systems have been shown to streamline the intake process, allowing clinicians to focus on more complex patient needs.³ In other cases, digital and AI-powered tools can support employees in more effective execution of tasks. For example, AI diagnosis and personalized treatment plans alleviate some of the administrative burden and allow for more patient-facing time.

Another example of AI’s impact is in workforce management, where platforms enable employees to choose their shifts, offering higher pay for harder-to-staff shifts. Some organizations use known platforms, while others have developed their own, with meaningful outcomes. Results include striking the optimal balance between core and flex staff, reducing agency staffing and decreasing reliance on agency staffing by more than 20%.⁴ A key factor driving these results is the reduction of the administrative burden on the centralized staffing function, underscoring the importance of user-friendly tools that effectively support clinical staff and alleviate clinician workload.

Case Study: Increasing Provider Retention with a People-Focused Onboarding Application

Situation: A large non-profit health system’s provider onboarding process was plagued by delays. New hires were often waiting months before they could begin working due to a disjointed onboarding and credentialing system. This inefficiency led to frustration among providers and contributed to high attrition, as many staff members left before they could even start. Administrative bottlenecks, poor communication and a lack of process visibility made the situation worse. As a result, the health system faced staffing shortages, lost productivity and operational disruptions that negatively impacted patient care.

Our Impact:

FTI Consulting created two market-leading onboarding applications that had a system-wide impact generating savings of approximately $106 million.
The team shortened the credentialing process from months to days, thereby improving provider satisfaction and retention while reducing turnover rates across the system; decreased the average onboarding time for new providers by 30%, thereby accelerating workforce readiness; and enhanced transparency for both providers and administrators, ensuring better tracking of progress and fewer missed steps in the process.
The team empowered new hires with real-time updates and clear guidance, improving their overall satisfaction and reducing frustrations related to onboarding delays.
As a result of streamlined credentialing and compliance workflows, FTI Consulting reduced administrative bottlenecks and manual errors.

Our Role:

FTI Consulting conducted interviews and workshops with healthcare providers and credentialing staff to understand pain points and process inefficiencies and designed and developed the future onboarding process for managing workflows, task assignments and team collaboration across multiple departments.
The team designed, built and deployed both a mobile app for new hires to track and complete onboarding activities, as well as a caregiver-facing web app allowing internal teams to seamlessly coordinate, assign tasks and efficiently monitor onboarding workflows.

Differentiated Culture: Creating a Future-Ready Employee Experience
Healthcare organizations must offer a compelling employee experience that aligns with modern workforce expectations. This includes providing flexibility in work schedules, offering competitive compensation packages and prioritizing mental health and wellness initiatives to reduce caregiver burnout and improve retention. Adopting workforce models that allow for greater work-life balance, remote care options, career advancement opportunities, the development of new skills and robust onboarding processes are critical considerations. By creating a supportive and flexible work environment, healthcare organizations can make careers in the sector more attractive and sustainable.

Conclusion: Rebuilding Resilience to Combat Burnout in Healthcare

The healthcare workforce shortage, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is a critical challenge that requires immediate and sustained action. Each healthcare organization faces unique challenges and must determine their root causes (e.g., flexibility, administrative burden, location, processes). They must then align strategies with the current workforce landscape, while balancing optimization, innovation and workforce well-being.

Solutions to workforce strategies lie on a spectrum — ranging from optimization and practical innovations to disruptive and transformative change. Depending on your organization’s current state and future vision, you may choose different capabilities outlined within the four solutions provided. Given your organization’s financial situation and priorities, you may consider the following approaches:

Optimizers should focus on resource optimization, cost analysis, prioritization and leveraging existing technology to improve workforce efficiency.
Practical innovators should focus on adopting new technologies to streamline processes and improve workforce productivity, while outsourcing and offshoring to help address immediate staffing gaps and position the organization for long-term growth.
Innovative disruptors must continue to disrupt the status quo by adopting cutting-edge technologies and developing new business models to stay ahead of the competition in talent acquisition, retention and patient care.

In conclusion, addressing the healthcare workforce shortage requires strategic, customized solutions tailored to each organization’s unique challenges and resources. Organizations would be wise to turn to a team with years of expertise partnering with health organizations to address workforce challenges. They must seek out a unique perspective to address specific needs, align solutions with financial and operational priorities and develop a sustainable and resilient workforce capable of meeting both current and future patient care demands.

Footnotes:

1: Gabriel A. Benavidez, Whitney E. Zahnd, Peiyin Hung and Jan M. Eberth. “Chronic Disease Prevalence in the US: Sociodemographic and Geographic Variations by Zip Code Tabulation Area,” CDC (February 29, 2024).

2: Andrew Malley, “Navigating The Healthcare Staffing Crisis: A Treatment Plan For Workforce Stability,” Forbes (December 29, 2023), <https:>.</https:>

3: Frederick Siu, Zihan Dong, Ryan Anderson, et al., “The Cydoc Smart Patient Intake Form Accelerates Medical Note Writing,” arXiv, Cornell University (June 23, 2023).

4: Bill Siwicki, “Mercy saves $30 million in 2023 with AI-powered nursing workforce management tech,” Healthcare IT News (April 10, 2024).