Immigrants Help to Alleviate U.S. Health Care Staffing Shortage
- Migrants accounted for 18.2% of health care workers in 2017
- 717,000 healthcare workers were age 65 or more last year
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
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The health care skills gap would be even larger without American immigrants.
In 2017, immigrants accounted for 18.2 percent of health care workers, according to a study published in Health Affairs. As the U.S. faces a shortage of health care workers, immigrants have helped fill some of the gaps. Migrants, in particular, are covering key shortage positions such as rural physicians, wrote Leah Zallman, an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the study. A growing elderly population and strict licensing requirements required of many health care workers has contributed to the shortage.