Modeling the workforce demand impacts of the Affordable Care Act
This session brings together both simulation models and retrospective secondary analysis to explore the effects of the Affordable Care Act on health workforce demand. The first paper, by Mark Holmes and colleagues, uses the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to predict county-level demand for health services, forecast future use, and discuss the implications of such demand on workforce demand. The second paper, by Bianca Frogner and colleagues, uses the ARCOLA microsimulation model, which predicts insurance demand and health services utilization, as a starting point to predict job growth that will occur due to the ACA. They find that many allied health occupations, including those with relatively low training requirements, will likely expand rapidly due to the ACA. They then assess the training capacity in the US using Department of Education data, and make recommendations to fill supply gaps. The final paper, by Susan Lu and colleagues, assess the impact of health reform in Massachusetts on hospital employment and earnings. Using data from CMS, they find that there were notable changes in total salaries paid by hospitals in the implementation period in Massachusetts, largely due to an increase in hours worked.