Workforce Report

Wisconsin’s Health Care Workforce is Growing, But Not Fast Enough to Meet Rising Demand 

Wisconsin has done a great job of growing the healthcare workforce since WHA began raising the alarm. Advancements have been made in building team models and technology that support patients and providers, and new Wisconsin policies are helping health care professionals work to their full potential. Unfortunately, burdensome payer requirements and unnecessary or overly complex regulations are such that, even with the progress made, the health care workforce is falling behind.

The payer and regulatory burden getting between health care teams and the patients they care for is a correctable cause that must be addressed with greater urgency and, very intentionally, tops the list of this year’s WHA Wisconsin Health Care Workforce recommendations.

Read the full 2026 WHA Health Care Workforce Report to learn how we can strengthen Wisconsin’s health care workforce for the future.

Recommended Strategies

• Make reimbursement models and regulation more flexible to support unique patient and family needs within the bounds of available community resources and systems of care.
• Set reasonable requirements and ensure the added benefit outweighs the additional work required, or the barriers to access created, before adopting new regulations or requirements.
• Mitigate insurance company policies and practices that unnecessarily delay and deny care at hospitals and get between providers and their patients.

• Provide potential entrants with career exposure, experience and support.
• Partner to increase capacity at technical colleges and universities and to leverage apprenticeships and other employer-based training opportunities.
• Ensure that the impact of sustained shortages on patient access and on the workforce in place are part of the risk benefit evaluation when changes to career pathways are considered.
• Increase funding to “Grow Our Own.”

• Recognize the potential of new models of care aided by technology, such as telehealth monitoring, recovery care at home and hospital at home through updated reimbursement and regulation.
• Identify opportunities to optimize the use of technology, simulation and artificial intelligence to enhance educational pathways, care for patients and work for clinicians with needed guardrails, but not unnecessary regulation.
• Update state law to support patient and family decision-making as they seek post-acute care to relieve bottlenecks in the continuum of care.