For the VA to continually replace its thousands of retiring and resigning employees every year it needs a reliable pipeline of talent in place, said NAPA. That means looking at feeder groups from top executive levels through the lowest academic levels.
NAPA placed the need to establish a vibrant workforce pipeline "at the center of VA’s human capital challenges" and said the existing pipeline was becoming more stressed as demand in the healthcare field continually outpaces supply — even with workers shut out of other industries due to the current economic recession.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the private sector over three million new healthcare workers will be needed by 2014, and the Department of Health and Human Services has projected a shortage of 340,000 healthcare professionals by 2014.
VA’s challenges include a growing veteran population, slowing growth of the labor force — in the long term at least — increasing demand for healthcare workers, and continued decline in science and math performance among US students, the report said.
