The health and wellness of all Granite Staters rely on a well-functioning and well-staffed healthcare system. As the population of New Hampshire ages, access to healthcare services will become even more critical. At New Futures, we support initiatives that help grow, retain, and sustain a resilient healthcare system.
Why It Matters
Healthcare is the fastest-growing employment sector, projected to add almost 10,000 jobs to the economy by 2030 - but New Hampshire’s healthcare workforce is not poised to grow enough to fill all these jobs. Currently, medical employers contract short-term workers to fill the current need. Complicating recruitment and retention is the aging of the state’s primary care workforce.
The New Hampshire healthcare workforce faces a number of challenges that affect staffing shortages:
- Stress, mental health, and barriers to care for members of the workforce
- Low wages and high cost of living in New Hampshire
- A thin pipeline to post-secondary education and training
- Reimbursement issues
By the Numbers
15.5%
Health care providers report a 15.5% total vacancy rate for medical service providers.
NH Hospital Association
Our Impact
In 2023, New Futures partnered with the New Hampshire Workforce Coalition to help advance legislation to increase Medicaid reimbursement rates. These increased rates help health care providers recruit and retain more workers and treat more patients in need. While this success is an important step in the right direction, there is still more work to do to grow our health care workforce, especially in rural and underserved communities.
