Healthcare to add 4.2M jobs by 2020

Healthcare jobs will grow twice as fast as the general economy, with an additional 4.2 million jobs by 2020, according to a study by Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University at Albany. Nearly one in nine U.S. jobs will be in the healthcare sector by 2020, the report states.

"Health sector jobs and health occupations have continued to grow, even in a weak economy, and will remain a major source of jobs for years to come." Center for Health Workforce Studies Director Jean Moore said in a research announcement Friday.

While jobs across industries fell 2 percent between 2000 and 2010, healthcare employment grew by more than a quarter throughout the same period, even during the economic downturn.

"One of the things I wasn't expecting was how much growth there was even during the recession," Moore told Kaiser Health News. "I would have expected some tempering of the growth."

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Better quality hurts patient experience

It may seem counterintuitive, but adopting mandated quality measures could hurt patient experience--at least in the short-term, according to a study scheduled for publication in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.

Calling it a "tradeoff," Ohio State University research shows a negative link between clinical quality and a patient's hospital experience after implementing quality strategies to meet state or federal requirements.

Researchers surveyed directors of quality or chief nursing officers at 284 hospitals in 44 states about their adherence to guidelines from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, as well as state patient safety guidelines, mandated in 2003. The researchers weren't surprised to find that implementing techniques to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety did, in fact, improve outcomes. However, they unexpectedly found that "these improvements sometimes came at the expense of the quality of the patient experience," according to a research announcement.

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