The health and well-being of all Granite Staters rely on a well-functioning and well-staffed health care 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
Over recent years, New Hampshire’s Medicaid rates have been the lowest in New England and among the lowest in the nation. This not only makes it more expensive for health care providers to treat individuals in need, but it severely hampers their budgets, limiting their ability to recruit and retain workers. In 2020, New Futures helped lead a broad coalition of healthcare providers and advocates to push for consecutive 3.1 percent rate increases to Medicaid rates; and in 2023, New Futures helped lead the charge for $135 million invested in the State Budget to further boost reimbursement rates. These increased rates help health care providers recruit and retain more workers and treat more patients in need.
In 2024, New Futures partnered with the New Hampshire Health Care Workforce Coalition on pipeline development to pass legislation that supports community health workers in New Hampshire. While these recent successes are 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.
