The Healthcare Professional Workforce: Understanding Human Capital in a Changing Industry

As the U.S. healthcare industry undergoes sweeping changes to increase efficiency and reduce costs, the healthcare workforce is changing as well. In this new system of care, physicians work alongside health care teams, where nurses, pharmacists, and other professionals must collaborate to provide better, more affordable care to many more patients than ever before. The HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL WORKFORCE is the first book to codify the transformations underway across health professions in the U.S. and to situate these changes within a larger context for both healthcare and non-healthcare audiences. This volume provides an important guide to understanding how health professionals fit within the emerging model of healthcare, and serves as a vital resource for readers in health policy management, medicine, public health, and organizational studies. Comprising seven unique chapters alongside commentaries from heads of healthcare organizations and influential physicians, THE HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL WORKFORCE provides a theoretical and practical benchmark for understanding the next generation of human capital in one of society's most important labor sectors.