On the following pages are highlights of findings to date and descriptions of the numbers of responses to questions asked by the Health Workforce Sentinel Network, including by facility type, geography (Accountable Community of Health (ACH)), and an overall summary of responses by question.To see findings from Sentinels’ responses to questions, click on “Findings” above and select “Findings by Facility Type” or “Findings by Geographic Region”.
Click here to see the questions asked of Sentinels.The Sentinel Network supports efficient and effective health workforce preparation and deployment by identifying emerging health workforce demand signals and trends and rapidly disseminating information to education, training and policy partner who can take action based on findings.
A summary of findings to date was included in Washington’s Health Workforce Council 2017 Annual Report and 2018 Annual Report.
Download summaries of some of the findings to-date by clicking on the occupation or facility types listed below.
July 2018
November 2018
| Number of Facility-Level Responses By Data Collection Period |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Facility Type | July – Sept. 2018 | Sept. – Oct 2017 | Apr. – May 2017 | Nov. – Dec. 2016 | June – July 2016 | |
| Primary care medical clinic (not FQHC or community clinic) |
21 | 4 | 8 | 7 | 17 | |
| Dentist office/dental clinic |
20 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 3 | |
| Skilled nursing facility | 19 | 14 | 11 | 28 | 17 | |
| Federally qualified health center (FQHC) or community clinic providing care free or on sliding fee scale |
13 | 23 | 18 | 18 | 19 | |
| Behavioral-mental health clinic/outpatient mental health and substance abuse clinic |
12 | 32 | 16 | 29 | 23 | |
| Nursing & personal care facility (not a Skilled Nursing or Intermediate Care Facility) |
11 | 4 | 5 | 15 | 7 | |
| Acute care hospital (25 beds or fewer) |
10 | 7 | 8 | 12 | 10 | |
| Acute care hospital (more than 25 beds) |
8 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 12 | |
| Specialty medical clinic | 8 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 22 | |
| Other | 6 | 7 | 3 | 8 | 4 | |
| School | 6 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 9 | |
| Higher Education / Research |
5 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0 | |
| Home health care service | 3 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 10 | |
| Intermediate care facility |
3 | 0 | 5 | 7 | 0 | |
| Medical/diagnostic laboratory |
3 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 5 | |
| Public health | 3 | 0 | 5 | 3 | 4 | |
| Specialty (except psychiatric/substance abuse) hospital |
3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Psychiatric/substance abuse hospital |
0 | 10 | 0 | 4 | 3 | |
| Total | 154 | 125 | 115 | 151 | 165 | |
Note: Each facility could serve clients/patients in more than one county, which is why the totals in the chart below are greater than the totals in the table above.
Note: Each facility could serve clients/patients in more than one county, which is why the totals in the chart below are greater than the totals in the table above.
- Click on a region of the map (or Ctrl/Cmd click on more than one region) to show data for the selected Accountable Community of Health.
- Select a single data collection period to show responses for each period.
Use the green filters to:
- Select the question to show.
- Select the facility type(s) to show.
This shows the number of respondents from each facility type who answered “Yes” to the selected question (orange) and the number who answered “No” (grey). The top section shows the total for all selected facility types. The bottom section shows the counts for individual facility types.
Percent of reported occupations with workforce changes, by facility type and data collection period
Use the dropdown menu to select the facility types you would like to view. Move your cursor over the orange or gray bars to see the number of “Yes” or “No” responses for each question by facility type and data collection period.
Interpretation: This chart tabulates the number of occupations reported to have experienced workforce demand changes by facility type and data collection period. Multiple occupations could be reported for each facility type which means the totals shown below will be different from the totals shown in the tables and graphics above. For example, the “Response Counts by Facility Type” table above indicates that there were 26 responses from Sentinels representing Behavioral/Mental health clinics in the first data collection period. Each of these Sentinels indicated the occupations that experienced workforce demand changes in the 3 – 4 months before the response date. These occupations were pooled into a set of occupation-level responses representing all of the occupations reported to have experienced workforce demand changes across all 26 Behavioral/Mental health clinics. If you move your cursor over the orange bar in the Behavioral/Mental health clinic row for data collected June 15, 2016 – July 30, 2016 and the “Occupations with Exceptionally Long Vacancies” column, this shows that there were 96 occupation-level responses from the 26 Behavioral/Mental health clinics in this data collection period. For 73 of these occupation-level responses (76%), the respondent answered “Yes”, indicating that there was an exceptionally long vacancy in the 3 – 4 months preceding data collection for the selected occupation. If you move your cursor to the orange bar directly to the right of this one, there were 100 occupations reported from the 26 Behavioral/Mental health clinics in the first data collection period for the increased demand question, showing that the number of occupations reported could change from question to question. If one or more of the data collection periods are missing, there were no occupation-level responses in that round from the facility type.
Conclusions: 1) The percentage of occupation-level responses that were reported to experience workforce changes (as indicated by the length of the orange bars) was relatively high for the exceptionally long vacancies and increased demand questions; was lower for the orientation/onboarding and training questions; and was rare for the decreased demand and new roles questions across all facility types and data collection periods. In other words, the pooled set of occupation-level responses for each facility type had a higher percentage of “Yes” responses for the exceptionally long vacancy and increased demand questions than for the other questions.
2) “Yes” response rates for some questions remained relatively consistent across data collection periods for some facility types (e.g., approximately 75% of the occupation-level responses at behavioral-mental health clinics were reported to have exceptionally long vacancies in each data collection period), while “yes” response rates were less consistent over the three data collection periods for other facility types. Such volatility is likely related to small numbers of occupation-level responses for some facility types and data collection periods. These changes should be monitored over time, especially where occupation-level response numbers are relatively high, to see if new signals of workforce demand change emerge.