This year promises to be one of changes, challenges, and growth for the healthcare industry.
Wondering how those changes and challenges will affect your facility?
We’ve compiled a list of six vital healthcare trends that will impact your staffing circumstances this year. Don’t worry; despite some potential big changes, it’s not all bad news.
Some of this year's trends offer opportunities to alter your approaches to staffing in meaningful ways.
1. Worsening nursing shortages
Are nursing shortages likely to worsen?
Unfortunately, the answer is yes for most states across the country. The demand for nurses currently outpaces the supply, and the gap is expected to widen.
It’s well known that the aging baby boomer generation is a significant factor influencing the nursing shortage. However, it’s not only that this age group requires more health services and care.
A significant cohort within the nursing profession itself—practicing nurses and nurse educators—is retiring or reaching retirement age.
Additionally, overworked nurses experience compassion fatigue, which leads to turnover and sometimes exodus from the field entirely.
Simultaneously, nursing programs with nurse educator shortages and limited clinical placements struggle to grow new generations of nurses that will offset the inevitable losses over the next several years.
As a result of the growing demand for nursing care, chronic facility understaffing due to nurses exiting the workforce, and the insufficient numbers of new talent joining the industry, the supply of available nursing talent is poised to become further strained.
While this outlook may paint an alarming picture, healthcare employers and facilities aren’t out of luck just yet. Facilities can employ staffing best practices like investing in training for new employees, diversifying where facilities find new nursing staff, and retaining experienced nurses to avoid getting hit by the worst effects of the nursing shortage.
2. A greater emphasis on employee retention
In light of the worsening nursing shortage, facilities should place more emphasis this year on retaining their nursing staff. This is particularly important in rural healthcare settings that often have smaller talent pools.
Healthcare workforce management should take a layered approach to nurse retention, involving more than one single strategy. Retention efforts shouldn’t be prioritized after an experienced nurse quits but instead should start as soon as a staff nurse starts their first day on the job.
Every moment in a nurse’s experience with a healthcare facility is a potential retention opportunity. From onboarding and training to providing necessary support with short-term, contingent staff, retention should be a priority.
Prioritize safe nurse staffing ratios
Nurses who feel overworked and unable to adequately perform their jobs are more likely to leave. Research published by the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis showed that registered nurses reported burnout, inadequate staffing, and a stressful work environment as the most common reasons for job turnover among nurses.
Incorporating multiple staffing strategies to fill shift gaps is a good start for prioritizing retention.
Listen to nurse feedback and opinions and take action
Your nurses are in the thick of it day in and day out. Provide opportunities for them to give feedback and share their opinions.
Most important of all, listen and take action.
Token attempts are likely to be met with lukewarm responses and have little to no effect. Therefore, establishing clear avenues for communication of feedback and documentation of follow-up and action plans is paramount.
Professional development opportunities
Does your nursing staff have a clear path for advancement within your facility or health system?
Consider offering opportunities for continuing education, skill workshops, and mentorship programs. When nursing staff believe their job is good for their career path, they may be less likely to look to external sources of advancement.
3. Shifts toward flexible workforce planning
In the last few years, there has been a notable change in attitudes toward healthcare staffing, which has almost certainly been influenced by the nursing shortage.
Nursa-commissioned research examined the opinions and attitudes of 203 hospital executives and found that 63 percent believe they could offer staff more scheduling flexibility if they had a larger pool of nurses.
Additional insights include the following:
- Independent contractor value: An overwhelming 93 percent of healthcare executives do not believe a contracted nurse is any less valuable than a W2 nurse.
- Diversified staffing approaches: More than 50 percent of health systems surveyed are utilizing at least four different strategies for nurse staffing.
- Increased use of per diem staffing: The number of shifts filled by per diem or contracted nurses has increased by two-thirds.
Alongside changing attitudes and increased use of contracted temporary nursing staff, the industry has seen explosive growth in healthcare staffing platforms.
Nursing clinicians find contract work appealing either as their primary source of income or to augment their W2 salaries.
4. Increased adoption of AI and technology
The use of AI in healthcare for tasks such as applicant screening and practitioner efficiency is increasingly common.
Other AI tools, such as automated worker surveillance and management (AWSM) systems and clinical decision support systems (CDSS), are more controversial with nursing staff.
National Nurses United (NNU) conducted a survey of over 2,300 registered nurses about the use of AI tools in the workplace. Here are a few highlights:
- Problems with AI patient-acuity measurements: Nearly 70 percent of RNs whose workplace utilizes this type of tool reported their own clinical assessments don’t match the tool’s assessment.
- Problems with AI shift handoff automation: Almost half of RNs whose workplace utilizes automated handoffs claimed these reports don’t match their own assessments.
- Clinicians unable to modify AI reports/assessments: Between 29 and 40 percent of RNs reported that when their own assessments don’t match that of the AI tool, they are unable to modify the report to reflect their clinical assessment.
What’s the key takeaway here?
Facilities integrating AI tools in the workplace should prioritize nurse staff buy-in and support.
This can be accomplished by involving nurses in the decision-making, modifications, training, and implementation of AI in their workplaces. Furthermore, facilities need to remember that implementing AI and technology is not a replacement for safe nurse staffing ratios.
5. Potential policy and regulatory changes
A new administration on Capitol Hill this year may mean changes to federal funding, legislation, and regulations.
Patient immigration status
One new change is a directive that rescinds guidelines that formerly protected illegal immigrants from being arrested if they were in “sensitive locations,” such as churches, schools, or hospitals. Hospital facility administrators can expect state guidelines to help them navigate how this will impact service delivery.
Regulation changes
The new administration has enacted a 60-day regulatory freeze for the Department of Health and Human Services. During the freeze, the HHS will use the time to review enacted and pending regulations.
This could result in some big regulatory change-ups this year.
Regulations, such as last year’s controversial CMS staffing mandate, a pending regulation about controlled substance prescriptions via Telehealth, and other regulatory requirements like the California Department of Public Health’s 530 form may come under review.
6. Investment in diversity, equity, and inclusion
The Affordable Care Act expanded health insurance coverage, helping to reduce racial inequities. Additionally, under the Biden administration, per Executive Order “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” federal agencies enacted programs geared towards diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
This set the tone for nongovernment agencies and companies—including healthcare facilities—to invest in their own equity action plans.
As such, DEI frameworks, cultural competence training for healthcare workers, and general awareness about inequities in the industry increased.
Will investment in diversity, equity, and inclusion continue with the recent political changes?
President Trump signed the Executive Order “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing” on January 20, 2025. With this order, all DEI federal programs were terminated.
However, financial pressures drive decision-making, and studies published by McKinsey & Company have shown that diversity is correlated to a company's financial outperformance.
Furthermore, healthcare research has shown improved patient care quality, patient satisfaction, and trust when a patient’s race matches that of their provider (referred to as race concordance).
Healthcare executives will have to balance political pressures with patient outcomes and financial profits as they make decisions about their own DEI frameworks this year.
The state of healthcare staffing is ever-changing
The state of healthcare staffing is ever-changing, and these changes create opportunities for innovation, engagement, and improvement.
Facilities can overcome the healthcare staffing challenges they face with targeted strategies that prioritize nurse staffing and retention, listening to nursing staff feedback, and thoughtfully implementing innovative ideas.
Learn more about clinician staffing solutions with Nursa.
Sources:
- National Nurses United: National Nurses United survey finds A.I. technology degrades and undermines patient safety
- Fierce Healthcare: What Trump's busy first week means for healthcare: AI policy shifts, HHS comms blackout, patient protections, and more
- National Center for Health Workforce Analysis: Job Satisfaction Among Registered Nurses – Data from the 2022 NSSRN
- The White House: Presidential Actions: Executive Order: Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing
- McKinsey & Company: Delivering through diversity
- National Library of Medicine: “It’s Important to Work with People that Look Like Me”: Black Patients’ Preferences for Patient-Provider Race Concordance
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