At the Healthcare Forward Symposium, executives, educators and state officials confronted an aging workforce and a shrinking talent pipeline
Health care is now Wisconsin’s largest employment sector, eclipsing manufacturing, but it also faces challenges — a quarter of Northeast Wisconsin’s health care employees are 55 or older and the working population to replace them is shrinking, with rural communities disproportionally affected.
These were just a few of the topics discussed at the Healthcare Forward Symposium held Wednesday at UW-Oshkosh’s Culver Family Welcome Center. Hosted by New North’s NEW Healthcare Alliance in partnership with UWO, the daylong forum drew health care executives, educators and workforce development officials to explore challenges and opportunities related to digital transformation, emerging talent needs, rural health care, workforce innovation and regional collaboration.
“Health care employers throughout Wisconsin continue to face workforce shortages amid evolving talent demands. Bringing together health care leaders, educators, workforce experts and policymakers to engage in strategic discussions and identify collaborative solutions is the goal of the forum,” said Rebecca Deschane, vice president of talent development for New North Inc. and leader of the alliance.
Matt Kures, community economic development specialist and researcher with the UW-Madison Division of Extension, opened the symposium with the keynote “Health care in the digital age.” He shared that health care and social assistance now accounts for nearly 16% of all employment in Wisconsin — more than 460,000 workers — after adding upward of 31,000 jobs statewide between 2019 and 2025, even as manufacturing shed roughly 25,000.
Marinette, Door, Green Lake, Manitowoc, Sheboygan, Outagamie, Winnebago and Calumet counties all posted health care employment gains above the state average over that period, according to Kures. Several other counties, such as Shawano, Waushara, Waupaca and Fond du Lac, lost ground, with Oconto County shedding nearly 26% of its health care and social-assistance workforce.
Statewide, 22.6% of health care and social-assistance employees are 55 or older, and many New North counties exceed that average. Kures projected that the region’s total working-age population will keep contracting through 2040, with only a handful of counties — Door, Brown, Outagamie, Calumet among them — expected to see growth in prime working-age residents.
Occupations projected to generate the most annual openings across the Bay Area and Fox Valley workforce development regions are home health and personal care aides, nursing assistants, registered nurses, medical assistants, dental and pharmacy technicians, phlebotomists and nurse practitioners.
On artificial intelligence, Kures said health care’s overall exposure sits at 35.6% — lower than finance or professional services — with registered nurses at 38% and nursing assistants at just 10.2%. “High levels of AI exposure does not mean job replacement,” he told attendees, arguing the technology will more likely reshape jobs than eliminate them.
Attendees also took part in roundtable discussions on the most critical skills for health care workers in the digital age and removing barriers to talent attraction and retention.
The NEW Healthcare Alliance was formed earlier this year and funded in part through a two-year Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment grant. The Alliance’s work is organized around five committees spanning health care organizations, education partners, workforce agencies and community leaders, with current efforts focused on asset-mapping across three priority areas: health care workforce solutions, next-generation engagement and clinical excellence.
Dr. Ashok Rai, president and CEO of Prevea Health, reframed the health care talent pipeline as the collective responsibility of stakeholders across the region.
“I recognize that health care organizations compete for patients, for contracts and — most relevant to the symposium — for the same people,” he said. “The distinction I’d offer is that, while we compete over the talent pool, we do not compete over the size of it. Recruiting from each other is zero-sum; growing the pipeline is not zero-sum. Upskilling and reskilling the people on our payrolls today — people who already live in our communities and aren’t planning to leave them — may be the fastest lever any of us in health care have.”
