As competition for healthcare talent intensifies, employers waiting for a vacancy to expose a weak spot may find the people they need are already harder to recruit, take longer to develop, or are in demand elsewhere.

The pressure is becoming more urgent as the private healthcare and social assistance sector is projected to add more than 2.2 million jobs from 2025 to 2035, accounting for approximately 37% of all new U.S. jobs created during that period, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections.

Doctors and nurses will remain central to caring for a growing number of patients, but the workforce needed to support that growth extends well beyond the professions dominating shortage headlines. Allied health professionals and non-clinical employees contribute across patient access, diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and daily operations.

Employers should identify those roles now, understand where the talent pool is thinnest, and decide how they will respond before a manageable workforce need becomes an urgent one.

Planning for tomorrow requires a different starting point: the services the organization currently provides or expects to expand.

Leaders can examine each service from the patient’s first point of contact through treatment and follow-up, identifying the clinical expertise, coordination, technology, equipment, and operational work involved along the way. This connects hiring decisions to how care is delivered rather than treating each opening as an isolated problem.

Expanding a specialty, for example, could mean added work in scheduling, records, equipment management, billing, or facilities in addition to greater clinical needs. A workforce plan centered primarily on the healthcare professionals delivering the service may not capture those demands.

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