Shortage of Healthcare Personnel in Waldorf, Maryland

SUBJECT: Shortage of healthcare personnel in Waldorf, Maryland
There have been significant developments in transforming the delivery of health care in the United States. For instance, the entrenchment of managed care in the U.S. health care system has helped reduce health care costs while improving quality of health services provided (Shi & Singh, 2019). Policy makers have also strengthened the individual market for health insurance resulting in marked declines in the uninsured rate (Collins, 2021). However, the expanding aging population with chronic conditions and in need of long-term care services presents a unique challenge given the severity of healthcare staff shortages in Maryland. Waldorf, a suburb situated in Charles County, has a patient to primary care physician ratio of 2,564 to 1. This is a 1.14% rise from previous years where primary care physicians saw an average of 2,535 patients annually (DATAUSA, 2022).
Waldorf has a higher number of primary care physicians compared to the national average ratio (most physicians see between 11 and 20 patients every day, which translates to an even bigger number of patient visits in a year) (Statista, 2022). However, the same cannot be said of certain rural regions in Maryland where residents are older, sicker, and poorer than the rest of the state’s population. However, healthcare personnel shortage in Waldorf has seen a gradual increase in health workforce imbalance since 2015, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic when staff were overwhelmed by the large number of patients seeking medical care. The coronavirus pandemic saw the mounting of healthcare demands and workloads thereby heightening the staffing crunch.
Maryland’s health care labor shortage is not just limited to hospitals but extends to nursing homes, laboratories, urgent care centers, and other health departments. For instance, the current shortage of nurses in the state is reported to be the worst in the past 40 years by various health experts and agencies, including the Maryland Nurses Association. A survey cond...