(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s hospitals say they are trying, the best
they can, to solve their own workforce needs across the state.
The Wisconsin Hospital Association testified before lawmakers at the Capitol in Madison on Wednesday about the 2025 Wisconsin Health Care Workforce Report.
“The WHA Workforce report is not a static document that just sits on a shelf for us,” WHA Senior Vice President Kyle O’Brien told lawmakers. “This is a living breathing document for us, in the sense that we use the data in the document to affect public policy.”
The overall report said Wisconsin needs more frontline health care workers.
Hospitals say a demographic boom means a lot of veteran nurses and other health care workers will retire in the coming years, just as Wisconsin’s population hits the “silver tsunami.”
The report, in particular, points to problems with rural health care, and a lack of potential workers.
That’s where O’Brien said the WHA has turned its focus.
“You will hear a lot today about hospitals and health systems throughout the state using what we call ‘grow our own’ or ‘grow from within’ workforce strategies to try to get the workforce that we need to actually provide access to care to patients,” O’Brien added.
He explained that many of the successful strategies for hospitals in 2025 started years ago, as a result he said, of programs from the legislature.
“I want to specifically highlight some matching grant programs that we established over a decade ago, that over time, the legislature and the governor have built upon over the last decade,” O’Brien said. “They have provided up to $100 million dollars in private and public investment across the state in getting more physicians, more advanced practice clinicians,
and more allied health professionals training in rural and urban Wisconsin communities.”
The full 2025 WHA Health Care report explains in further detail the needs for the future, including more health care workers, and new state laws or regulations to help with better rural care.
