The U.S. healthcare workforce shortage will nearly double by 2040 without intervention, but pairing talent investment with new care delivery models could close 92% of the gap, according to Chicago-based, for-profit healthcare educator, Covista.
The Covista Healthcare Workforce Index was released Sept. 28. Consulting firm Oliver Wyman built the model from more than 60 academic, government, industry and business data sets, plus interviews with health system leaders. Covista estimates a shortage of 2.2 million healthcare workers by 2040.
Unfilled positions cost the U.S. health system $46 billion per year, according to the index. That figure is projected to reach $140 billion by 2040. For the average family, the cost rises from $430 a year in 2026 to $1,250, a projection that includes 7% annual growth from inflation.
The index also puts figures on the clinical stakes. Closing the nursing shortage alone could save nearly 100,000 lives by 2040. Closing the physician gap could add more than six months to average life expectancy and cut specialist wait times by 20%.
Here’s how the index described how the healthcare industry could reach the 92% workforce gap closure:
Talent pipeline (57% combined)
- Developing talent: Expanding training capacity could close 25% of the gap. Nursing schools turned away about 93,000 qualified applications in 2025, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.
- Retaining clinicians: Reducing burnout could close about 25%.
- Attracting new talent: Recruiting more people into the field, especially nontraditional students, could close 7%.
Care delivery innovation
- AI: Automating documentation and administrative work could close up to 37% of the gap. However, that gain comes with a catch: As AI frees up clinician time, it may also surface unmet patient needs, which the index estimates could offset 18% of the gains.
- Breakthrough therapeutics: Treatments such as GLP-1s and CAR-T cell therapy could shrink the gap by 21%.
- Care model redesign: A shift toward preventive medicine could close another 13%.
The care delivery strategies slightly overlap, so their combined effect is less than the sum of the three. The index also models the talent levers under a best-case scenario and the innovation levers under a most-likely scenario based on current adoption trends. The report does not give a headcount for the current or projected shortage.
“Technology can offer efficiencies; it can’t do the job,” said Michael Betz, chief growth and innovation officer of Covista and president of Minneapolis-based Walden University. “Our focus has to be building tools that free up our clinicians to do the thing they love the most: caring for patients.”
The index urges health systems to treat staffing gaps as an enterprise risk, redesign jobs to keep talent and invest in preventive and primary care. For policymakers, its recommendations include expanding the faculty pipeline, investing in safer workplaces and allowing clinicians to work to the full extent of their training.
Covista operates five healthcare schools, including Chamberlain University, Walden University and Ross University School of Medicine.
