KENTUCKY — Leaders in Washington and Frankfort are shining a light on health care workforce shortages being reported nationwide. 

In Washington, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee held a hearing focused on the health care workforce shortages that hospitals across the country are facing. 

“Despite all of our health care spending, we don’t have enough doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, dentists, dental hygienists, pharmacists, mental health providers, and other medical professionals,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT., said in his opening statement. 

As chairman of the committee, Sanders added that “means that nearly 100 million of our people live in a primary care desert where they are unable to gain the timely access to a doctor when they need it.” 

Meanwhile, in Frankfort, members of the Kentucky Hospital Association met with state lawmakers to discuss similar issues at the state level. 

“The nursing shortage, that’s a national shortage. Our hospitals are having to compete against other states for nurses,” said Nancy Galvagni, president of the Kentucky Hospital Association. 

That organization recently released a report showing that over 22% of the nursing positions in the state were vacant. 

“We produce many nursing graduates. Unfortunately, many of those graduates are leaving our state. That really puts us at a disadvantage,” Galvagni explained. “Also, because we have so many governmentally insured patients and those payments are low, that really hurts our ability to pay higher wages.” 

In an interview with Spectrum News, Dr. Leslie Sizemore, with a state-funded initiative called the Healthcare Workforce Collaborative, said some of the most underserved areas are in rural parts of the state. Sizemore used far western Kentucky and far Eastern Kentucky as examples. 

“A lot of students go to urban areas for education and then often they stay there,” Sizemore explained. “They find hospitals where they have done internships and clinical rotations and they are comfortable in those so often they don’t go back to their home areas.”

According to data from the Kentucky Healthcare Collaborative, the state is projected to need over 16,000 additional nurses by 2024. The need is driven by retirements, declining labor force participation and low birth rates. Their research show that “the problem is compounded by a skills gap and the state’s lower than average educational attainment rate.” 

The Healthcare Workforce Collaborative is a group that comprises college faculty, state leaders and members of the health care sector who work to raise awareness of health care occupations, improve pathways to college-level health care programs and provide grants to Kentucky’s public institutions.