Solutions

Solutions powered by
Learn More.
abaqis for Skilled Nursing

abaqis®

Mitigate risk and elevate your quality of care. Improving both clinical and business outcomes starts with a smarter, more integrated approach to regulatory training, continuing education and quality management.

Learn More

NEW TO THE STORE

The S.T.A.B.L.E. Program Online Course

Improve quality of care for well and sick infants. Learn how it can transform your ability to accurately monitor and care for infants, improving their quality of life.

AACN ECCO Essentials of Critical Care Orientation

Essentials of Critical Care Orientation (ECCO), from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), is an interactive, case-based course designed to orient nurses on critical care basics.

COVID-19 Support Courses

These courses are designed to educate staff on current guidelines for infection control across various care settings and precautions for airborne pathogens.

LATEST & POPULAR

BLOG

Nurse Strikes are Scary, but License Verification Doesn’t Have to be
BLOG

Ten Trends for 2023: Rising Temperatures and Generational Changes
BLOG

Ten Trends for 2023: CMS Cuts and Other Disruptors
BLOG

Ten Trends for 2023: Hospital at Home and Integration of Behavioral Health and Primary Care
BLOG

Ten Trends for 2023: Emerging Technology and Cybersecurity
BLOG

Ten Trends for 2023: Financial Woes and Staffing

< HealthStream Resources

Importance of Anticipated U.S. Demographic Shifts in Healthcare

April 1, 2021
April 1, 2021

The entire healthcare industry is going to feel the growing impact of a demographic change unlike any the United States has ever seen. The aging of our population, which some have called a “silver tsunami,” will only keep accelerating. We are not that far away from 2034, the date when older adults are first expected to outnumber children in the population. Even before then, all baby boomers will be older than 65 by 2030, such that the older adult population will comprise 21% of the population, up from 15% today.

Rising Expenditures and Caregiver Shortages

One result of these changes is the anticipated rise in national health expenditures—the $4 trillion estimated for 2020 will increase to $5 trillion by 2025. In 2019, CMS projected that the national health expenditure growth is expected to average 5.5 percent annually from 2018-2027, reaching nearly $6.0 trillion by 2027 (CMS, 2019). In addition to the staggering growth in aggregated cost, the workforce needed to treat the growth in healthcare demand will be astounding. Beyond the shortage of clinicians, Mercer Consulting predicts that by 2025 U.S. providers also will face a collective shortage of about 500,000 home health aides, 100,000 nursing assistants, and 29,000 nurse practitioners (Mercer, 2019).

Acute Shortages of Much-Needed Geriatricians

Specific areas of the physician shortage also will be related to this shift in need. The current need for geriatricians far outstrips our supply of them, especially when you realize that about 30% of the population 65 and older requires some type of geriatric care. That equates to more than 15 million people in need. Since each certified geriatrician can effectively treat up to 700 patients, we would need about 21,500 certified geriatricians to care for the Silver Tsunami—four times the current supply! Dishearteningly, there was a 21% decrease in the number of first-year geriatric residents from 2010 to 2015. This means that the pool of certified doctors is now shrinking at the same rate the need for them is growing. Future issues surrounding geriatric care are alarming, from the increasing population with chronic conditions and decline in family caregiving options to the very sustainability and structure of federal healthcare programs.

This blog post is an excerpt from the longer HealthStream article, Ten Healthcare Trends for 2020, where Robin Rose, Vice President, Healthcare Resources Group, HealthStream discusses this information in detail. HealthStream is dedicated to improving patient outcomes through the development of healthcare organizations' greatest asset: their people. Learn more about our