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In a recent front page article of USA Today (Doctor Shortage Looms as Primary Care Loses its Pull), reporter Janice Lloyd examines the nation’s shortage of primary care physicians. I applaud Lloyd for accurately describing the health care challenges facing Americans right now, and in the future. Americans are living longer with more and more chronic conditions, requiring a different kind of care. Our health care education system – for physicians, nurses and other providers – predominantly prepares providers for acute care, as opposed to basic primary care or chronic care management. Increasingly, health care is delivered outside of hospital settings, in the community, at home and in other settings. Americans with changing health care needs simultaneously are facing a changing health care delivery system and a looming shortage of all kinds of providers, nurses and primary care physicians chief among them.

At the Center to Champion Nursing in America, our goal is to ensure all Americans have a highly skilled nurse when and where they need one. But it is important to note that we consider this our mission only within context of creating a broader health care workforce that meets the needs of Americans.

Regardless of whether health reform happens in any widespread way, no one can deny we must pay attention to our health care workforce. Along with physicians and other providers, nurses play key roles in the delivery of preventive care, chronic care management, transitional care, and primary care. The important question is how we can increase numbers of all such providers. To ensure Americans have access to high quality and cost effective care, we must ask how we can educate, build and deploy a 21st century health care workforce that is made up the right numbers of providers, with the right skills.