The health care workforce: will it be ready as the boomers age? A review of how we can know (or not know) the answer.

The baby-boom generation will reach the age of eligibility for Medicare starting in 2011. This large group of Americans will require more health care, and more health care workers will be needed to meet those needs. Understanding the needs as well as the size of the workforce needed requires substantial analysis and extensive data. Two major approaches can be used to make these estimates, and the choice of both methods and assumptions can affect the outcomes of any analysis. For the United States to make workforce policy decisions with the best information, we must invest in systems and resources to generate those data and support policy-making bodies that can interpret and make recommendations consistent with the analyses.