Through a contract with the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH), IMS has worked over the past year to lead a multi-disciplinary workforce project team that included the Iowa Hospital Association, the Iowa Pharmacy Association, and the Iowa Primary Care Association. This group has collaborated to establish a comprehensive statewide strategy to address the workforce barriers in Iowa. This initiative brought together healthcare leaders and stakeholders from the business, payer, and educational communities. It built upon the work initiated in 2018 with the formation of the IMS Physician Workforce Committee and the fall 2019 Physician Workforce Stakeholder Meeting that included many of these same stakeholder groups meeting for the first time across industries for a frank and comprehensive discussion about our state’s provider workforce needs at all levels.

Over the past year, the project team has conducted a series of townhall-style focus groups and surveys to identify needs, barriers, and opportunities, which helped to inform a stakeholder task force that jointly crafted the Iowa Rural Healthcare Workforce Strategic Action Plan – Iowa’s first-ever comprehensive, statewide provider workforce strategic plan. This report has been submitted to IDPH and IMS has been tapped to lead year two of this work, which now pivots to implementation of the recommendations included in the plan.