Solving Healthcare’s Toughest Challenges with Smarter Strategies
So, you want to solve all of the healthcare industry’s greatest challenges. Someone has an elevated sense of personal responsibility. If you do have a solution for the problem of shortages, bottlenecks, and medical debt, you have a great future ahead of you in politics.
If you’re like the rest of us, hoping for simple, sustainable fixes, there may be strategies worth considering. While no single solution is going to fix healthcare’s biggest problems, new ways of thinking about old problems can make a considerable difference.
In this article, we take a look at what is hurting American healthcare and what could potentially be done about it. Read on to learn more.
The Problem with Shortages
A lot of people think that healthcare shortages began during the pandemic. COVID did exacerbate the problem considerably.
Many people who were considering leaving their jobs prior to the pandemic outright did it when the risk of contracting a deadly, mysterious illness came into the mix.
However, analysts have been sounding the alarm about nursing employment in particular for much longer than the phrase COVID-19 has been in public circulation.
For almost two decades, there has been a quiet but persistent problem in healthcare: poor recruitment. Lots of people leave the profession. They either retire or churn out, often within five years. Not enough people come in through the ranks to take their place.
This creates two problems. One: why don’t enough people want jobs in healthcare? Two: how come the people who think they want jobs in healthcare often turn out to be wrong?
While there’s no simple answer to either question, there are some likely candidates and even overlap between the two considerations.
Basically, the job is really hard. People don’t want it because there are easier ways to make a five-figure salary. They leave it because, even though they care very much about helping people, they’re burned out physically and emotionally.
The solution to these problems would need to be multifaceted. On a recruitment level, colleges can consider looking at better-refined data sets to figure out what qualities nurses with longevity have and how to identify those features in 18-year-olds.
Even with better recruitment processes, however, there are important lifestyle considerations for keeping nurses around.
Some hospitals have a lot of nurses who are already invested, and some are actively working on this: better compensation, more suitable hours, and a bigger emphasis on work-life balance and mental health resources.
Even with more money, better recruiting, and improved social-emotional support, people will inevitably still leave nursing.
That said, if society were able to improve retention numbers by even a modest 15–20%, it could make an enormous difference — both on patient outcomes and the overall efficiency of healthcare systems across the country.
Regional Shortages
It’s worth noting that while there’s a general healthcare shortage, the problem also has a regional dimension that requires a more nuanced approach. When people hear about nursing shortages, they often picture overcrowded city hospitals. While urban areas do experience staffing gaps, rural communities are hit hardest.
Think about it this way: if a metro area has a population of one million, the community can consistently produce dozens or even hundreds of new nurses each year. Meanwhile, a rural community with a single hospital serving three counties might only see one new nurse every couple of years. Recruiting talent from outside is another challenge. How do you convince a nurse raised near New York City that they’d be happier relocating to Charleston, Illinois?
Short-term, rural hospitals often rely on travel nurses. These professionals take temporary placements where demand is greatest, moving every three to six months and often earning nearly double the pay of their peers. It’s a necessary but temporary fix—a band-aid.
For a longer-term solution, recruitment efforts need to reach deeper into rural communities. Universities can expand their presence in small towns, offering targeted outreach and enhanced scholarships to encourage local students to pursue nursing. By building pipelines directly from rural schools to nursing programs, these regions could better sustain their own workforce.
Rural America is often overlooked, but in healthcare, it has been hit just as hard—if not harder—than anywhere else.
The Problem with Price
Making healthcare affordable is one of the most complex and seemingly insurmountable challenges. It’s not an issue that any single individual can solve. What you can do is contribute to a more equitable healthcare environment through legislative action—by voting for candidates who reflect your views on healthcare policy, or by advocating for solutions at public forums and rallies.
At the end of the day, sustainable change will require a coordinated effort from many people. Your voice matters, but it’s important to recognize that no job, no vote, and no single charitable act can tackle the problem of cost on its own.
Making the Change
If you want to play a key role in changing your local healthcare scene, there are several job opportunities to consider. Yes, you can be a doctor. A nurse. An administrator. In these roles, you will considerably improve conditions at one hospital.
Or you can become a healthcare consultant.
Healthcare consultants work a little differently. They still move the needle, but at many different hospitals all over the region. Maybe all over the country.
They are problem solvers. They are called in to struggling hospitals. They look at the problem from an objective third-party angle.
They develop systemized solutions that the hospital can use long after the consultant has left.
