The medical laboratory profession has received an important boost of visibility as the focus of a major policy report, which was produced with funding from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The University of Washington Center for Health Workforce Studies (UW CHWS) recently published a series of reports on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on various allied health occupations and how these workforces are being deployed during the pandemic.
One of the reports focuses on the clinical lab workforce because it has played a critical, but often hidden role in interrupting the spread of coronavirus by developing, performing and interpreting COVID-19 tests. This particular report is a companion piece to study released last May,
Clinical Laboratory Workforce: Understanding the Challenges to Meeting Current and Future Needs, which was conducted by ASCP in partnership with the UW CHWS and supported by a grant from the Siemens Foundation.
The UW CHWS received funding from the U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) through cooperative agreements supporting Health Workforce Research Centers. In addition to the report that focused on the “allied health” workforce, the other supported research on the training and education of health professionals in health equity. Through this funding, CHWS received a broad mandate to identify important topics to address, including this study describing how specific allied health occupations were utilized during the pandemic and how these workforces managed unpredictable and increased patient volumes.
The report is targeted toward policy makers, planners, educators, clinicians and others with interest in the health workforce. It provides a general overview of the clinical lab workforce and its role during the pandemic and describes state and national approaches for emergency increases to the clinical lab workforce.
The policy brief will help policy makers devise solutions to address workforce challenges. To ensure adequate access to clinical laboratory services across the country, policy makers and planners need clear descriptions of the workforce and the issues relating to their education/training, recruitment and retention. A better understanding of this workforce will lead to greater visibility of careers in the clinical laboratory field, increase supply where recruitment is limited, and help identify barriers to professional development and workforce retention. The brief has been submitted to HRSA, and ASCP is developing an action plan based on the report.
To date, the report has been published on the
UW CHWS website and in its newsletter and presented at national conferences. It is available for use by researchers, policy makers, educators and students.
