The Health Workforce Dream Team: Who Will Provide the Care?

December 2, 2010

In today’s evolving health care system, many providers and policymakers envision team-based care as an important component of the plan to improve quality, maximize resources, promote wellness, expand preventive care and enhance the value of the health care dollar. The health workforce “dream team” includes physicians, nurses, nutritionists, physical therapists, social workers, nurses’ aides, direct care workers, home health aides and others who contribute to coordinated care in a high quality system.

But are there enough health care workers to provide care for a growing, aging population with ever increasing chronic care needs? Are there incentives to keep workers in the health professions and move them up a career development ladder quickly enough to meet the impending need? What will care teams look like? What legislative adjustments will states need to make to implement the provisions of the Affordable Care Act?

To answer these and related questions, the Alliance for Health Reform and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sponsored a Dec. 2 briefing. Panelists were: Linda Burnes Bolton, vice president for nursing and chief nursing officer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles; Joel Teitelbaum of George Washington University; Bob Konrad, co-director of the Program on Health Professions and Primary Care at the Cecil G. Sheps Center, Chapel Hill, NC; and Catherine Dower of the Center for the Health Professions at the University of California – San Francisco. Ed Howard of the Alliance and Sue Hassmiller of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation co-moderated.

Transcript

Full Transcript (Adobe Acrobat PDF)

Speaker Presentations

Joel Teitelbaum Presentation (PowerPoint)
Thomas R. (Bob) Konrad Presentation (PowerPoint)
Catherine Dower Presentation (PowerPoint)

Event Details

Agenda (Adobe Acrobat PDF)

Event Resources