There will be job growth for the next decade, federal economists say, but predicting which jobs hospitals and healthcare systems will be most seeking to fill in the coming year is a bit tougher to pin down.
Forecasting the trajectory of the healthcare job market is a popular New Year's exercise, and judging by the forecasts I've seen, conditions are looking pretty good for healthcare careers in 2014.
Here's the long view: The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects healthcare jobs to grow at a rate of 2.6% between 2012 and 2022. Less than 3% may not sound great, but over a decade, that adds up to 5 million jobs.
These numbers point to happy days, but how about some specifics? Is the industry starting to see these optimistic projection play out? As of now, there isn't a concrete answer. Landry Seedig, Senior VP and General Manager of the Allied Division of workforce solutions provider AMN Healthcare, notes that the end of 2013 left his organization with a murky view of the upcoming year.
"We thought that things would become a lot more clear as we approached the end of 2013, but unfortunately it has gotten a little bit more muddy," said Seedig in a phone interview. "There was the expectation of more patients coming in, and you can talk about [Healthcare.gov] and whatever else. The crystal ball hasn't gotten much clearer as we approach a new year in which a lot of this stuff kicks in."
Despite the cloudy nature of the job market, he says that AMN is seeing solid demand from its clients. In terms of which hot jobs should see good movement in the future, Seedig points to specialists, particularly those involved in care management.
"You hear so much about decreasing the amount of readmissions and having better outcomes, so everything surrounds more efficiency, better outcomes, and not being penalized for readmissions," he says. "Now the case managers and the social workers are helping the patient navigate through their care and providing the best care."
Case managers, Seedig points out, are a particularly useful position for hospitals. These workers are important in determining if a patient is ready to move out of acute care, and can help a hospital avoid readmission penalties, since once a patient is moved out of acute care, treatment costs are reduced.
On the other end of the spectrum, certain jobs are tough for providers to fill due to high demand and low supply. Seedig cites occupational therapists, physical therapists, and speech pathologists as three positions that are on the high demand/low supply spectrum. He notes that these jobs have high education requirements and require six to eight years of training, which contributes to low workforce supply.
Another field that has seen a constant stream of growth in healthcare is information technology. Seedig says healthcare IT has seen strong job surges over the past five years with the rise in EMR use.
"I think technology is a huge opportunity within healthcare. It's already started, but it takes a while. Healthcare runs about 10 years behind other industries, especially when it relates to technology. There's big opportunity to make it more efficient, and I think that's where a lot of the cost savings should come from as we get better at the type of technology that we are implementing."
And just when it seems that trends have been established, the entire supply-demand structure can change in an instant. All it takes is a new rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to turn everything on its head.
"It's funny how legislation from CMS can turn that on a dime to where your demand can shoot way down," says Seedig. "You still have more patients, more reporting requirements, [and ] higher demand based on how many patients you think need to receive care, but you actually see your demand go way down because the facility that's being reimbursed by Medicare or Medicaid sees their reimbursements get so tight that the only lever they have to pull is their employee expense."
In the end, he says, "there is no crystal ball. We don't exactly how everything is going to shake out, so BLS does their best to try and predict what occupations are going to be the best based on what they are seeing on the aging population, based on the state of current people in the market, and how long it will take to educate new people."
"There are so many things changing within healthcare today, I don't think anyone knows for sure what that's going to look like ten years down the road."