For the past several years, attempts have been made at every level including the United States Congress to try to address the nationwide shortage of qualified medical laboratory personnel.
According to a 2006 report by the U.S. Department of Labor, healthcare is predicted to grow by 16.8 % over the next 10 years. The medical laboratory workforce sector needs 15,000 new practitioners each year to meet the demand, and yet clinical education programs only graduate approximately 5,000 students annually. Compounding this projected shortage is that with the current average age of laboratory professionals at 47, we are faced with the additional challenge of having to replace this aging workforce at the same time. Florida has the largest concentration of seniors of any other state in the country; this aging population will use healthcare at a much higher rate than the population of other regions. In addition, while Florida is becoming increasingly diverse ethnically, the laboratory workplace is not: the current workforce is predominately female, white and non-Hispanic, and therefore does not adequately reflect the public it attempts to serve. Finally, in southeastern Florida there is a growing concentration of research facilities, scientific equipment companies and medical laboratories independent of the regions hospitals. These facilities are expected to increase the demand for even more skilled technicians and technologists, as well as for culturally and linguistically competent clinical laboratory workers. In fact, current occupational projections list medical and clinical laboratory technology as the occupation with the greatest demand in the life sciences industry in the southeast Florida region. According to the Final Report of the Workforce Alliance in West Palm Beach [2005], projections for employment growth rates in the life sciences industry foresee 26 percent to 102 percent growth, adding between 5,822 and 23,156 new employees in the laboratory sciences by 2012. The growth is predicted to be slower during the first four to- five years of the 10 year period. The Florida Health Education Centers Network places the total number of lab technologists employed in the state in 2006 at 8,559, and predicts that by 2014 there will be 10,170an annual growth rate of 2.4%. The national shortage of clinical laboratory workers has been addressed through a number of task forces, such as the Coordinating Council on the Clinical Laboratory Workforce (CCCLW), consisting of professional organizations and governmental agencies attempting to develop strategic plans to identify the problems and tackle the issues. According to the CCCLW website, which provides among other resources a listing of each states efforts regarding data collection and the establishment of commissions to deal with many healthcare issues including the shortage, Florida currently has no task force or data collection available to allow statistical analysis at the state or local level. If we hope to understand the employment trends and needs in the laboratory sciences within our region, if we hope to supply our communities with qualified educated laboratory personnel so that we may better serve the medical needs of our friends, family and neighbors now and in the future, the first step must be to increase our efforts in the collection of reliable data. These efforts will provide us with accurate information and statistics so that we may determine the true need for medical laboratory personnel in our area hospitals, research facilities and laboratories over the next 10 years. We must have a factual base for addressing these issues without which effective workforce planning and policy-making is impossible. It is essential that our local universities and community colleges are provided with the statistical data necessary to understand the areas educational and enrollment trends, so they can effectively develop strategies that will provide our communities with a well educated, vital workforce that will meet the future local demands.
