As competition for healthcare talent intensifies, employers waiting for a vacancy to expose a weak spot may find the people they need are already harder to recruit, take longer to develop, or are in demand elsewhere.
The pressure is becoming more urgent as the private healthcare and social assistance sector is projected to add more than 2.2 million jobs from 2025 to 2035, accounting for approximately 37% of all new U.S. jobs created during that period, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections.
Doctors and nurses will remain central to caring for a growing number of patients, but the workforce needed to support that growth extends well beyond the professions dominating shortage headlines. Allied health professionals and non-clinical employees contribute across patient access, diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and daily operations.
Employers should identify those roles now, understand where the talent pool is thinnest, and decide how they will respond before a manageable workforce need becomes an urgent one.
Start With the Service, Not the Opening
Planning for tomorrow requires a different starting point: the services the organization currently provides or expects to expand.
Leaders can examine each service from the patient’s first point of contact through treatment and follow-up, identifying the clinical expertise, coordination, technology, equipment, and operational work involved along the way. This connects hiring decisions to how care is delivered rather than treating each opening as an isolated problem.
Expanding a specialty, for example, could mean added work in scheduling, records, equipment management, billing, or facilities in addition to greater clinical needs. A workforce plan centered primarily on the healthcare professionals delivering the service may not capture those demands.
Know Where the Plan Has Less Flexibility
Employers can then focus on the roles that may require more lead time or a different recruiting approach. A few questions can guide that review:
- How difficult is it to find the right talent? Consider the local candidate pool and whether licenses, certifications, specialized experience, or geographic competition make recruiting more difficult.
- Who can cover the work? Determine whether responsibilities are shared among several qualified employees or rest with a small number of people.
- How long would internal development take? Some skills can be learned on the job, while others require formal education, supervised experience, or additional credentials.
- What could change the workload? Planned expansion, changing patient needs, new technology, or heavier volumes may alter the amount or type of talent required.
- When should recruitment begin? If a role requires specialized credentials, draws from a limited local talent pool, or will be needed for an upcoming expansion, recruiting should begin before the position becomes urgent.
Occupation-level projections can add useful context. For example, employment of respiratory therapists is projected to grow 9% from 2025 to 2035, with about 8,600 openings annually, on average. Although conditions will vary by market, those projections can help employers recognize when a role connected to their services deserves closer attention.
More Healthcare Professionals Don’t Automatically Mean More Capacity
Hiring additional staff may increase the number of patients an organization can treat, but only if the rest of the operation can keep pace. Scheduling, records, billing, equipment, inventory, facilities, and environmental services all help turn clinical availability into care patients can access.
There’s no universal formula for how those functions should scale. A hospital expanding a specialty service will have different requirements than a long-term care facility responding to higher patient volumes. Employers need to consider where that added activity will land and whether existing teams can realistically absorb it.
Match the Response to the Need
Once a gap is identified, the solution doesn’t automatically have to be another full-time hire. Determining which type of employee or staffing approach fits the situation isn’t always straightforward, especially when workforce needs vary by role, service, and local talent market.
Steady growth may justify permanent hiring, while fluctuating volumes or temporary absences could be better suited to per diem or contract staffing. With more time to prepare, an organization may also be able to develop current employees, cross-train qualified team members, reconsider requirements that unnecessarily restrict the talent pool, or begin recruiting before a position opens.
That’s where the staffing experts at Express Healthcare Staffing and Express Employment Professionals can help. Their locally owned offices combine healthcare staffing experience with knowledge of the community and established connections to local talent, giving employers another way to reach qualified workers and find an approach that fits the situation.
With the right resources in place, employers can move from reacting to openings to preparing for the roles most closely tied to future growth. No organization can know exactly where every shortage will appear, but leaders can determine which services and positions warrant attention now. Preserving that time and flexibility can make the difference between choosing a thoughtful workforce strategy and letting the pressure choose it for them.
