Carolina Health Workforce Research Center

Carolina Health Workforce Research Center

If the United States health care system is to successfully move from paying for volume to rewarding value, we will need to structure the training and deployment of the workforce to deliver value. The Carolina Health Workforce Research Center (CHWRC) seeks to meet this challenge by conducting and disseminating timely, policy-relevant research on emerging health workforce topics that help defi ne and measure value in the health workforce.

The Center’s work focuses on:

Developing new data collection and analytic methods to improve our understanding of the value of diff erent skill mix confi gurations in new models of care Developing metrics and toolkits that state and federal policy makers can use to evaluate the return on investment of public funds spent on health workforce training  

Conducting studies to understand and measure the plasticity—or fl exibility—of the workforce to move between specialties, employment settings and roles as new payment and care delivery models emerge 

Since 2013, our research has been used by a wide range of audiences to shape state and federal health workforce policy. We have developed innovative methods and data visualizations that have advanced the science of workforce research as we mentor students from a wide range of disciplines who will form the next generation of health workforce researchers.

As state and federal policy makers face budget constraints, they are seeking more information about the value of health workforce investments, an area of inquiry that has been largely unaddressed in past discussions about paying for value in the health care system. 