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A new report from the American Immigration Council says more immigrants make up Iowa’s health care workforce — and yet barriers to hiring remain constant roadblocks. Those hurdles, the council added, pose a problem for states like Iowa to grapple with a growing labor shortage.
The council said many immigrant workers are educated, trained and licensed to practice medicine in another country but face different hurdles once they arrive in the U.S. such as language barriers and a re-credentialing process. Their skills often are overlooked or underused.
According to the report, there were about 5,000 immigrant health care practitioners in Iowa between 2015 and 2019, their occupations ranging from nurses and dentists to medical technicians. Of that figure, roughly 21% — or close to 1,000 — were physicians and surgeons.
The council said Iowa has struggled to employ physicians long before the COVID-19 pandemic, with some counties only having 10 physicians per 100,000 residents. The state may need an additional 119 primary care physicians by 2030, especially in rural communities, the council reported. It also needs more registered nurses, licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses, medical records specialists and clinical laboratory technicians.
“For Iowa to remain competitive and address critical shortages of physicians and other health care practitioners, itwill be crucial to implement policies that not only attract and retain global talent that is complementary to the U.S.-born workforce, but that also builds career pathways for immigrants who already call the state home,” the council said in a news release.
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With most health care jobs seeking employees who are multilingual and culturally competent, Iowa could be missing out on a whole host of people who could provide that support, the council said. From 2017 to 2021, the number of health care jobs that required bilingual skills in Iowa increased 13%, it found.
F. Amanda Tugade covers social justice issues for the Des Moines Register. Email her at ftugade@dmreg.com or follow her on Twitter @writefelissa.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Group says immigrants could be the answer to Iowa’s health care workforce shortage
