A Beginner’s Guide to Rhode Island’s Healthcare Workforce Dashboard

Changes in the healthcare workforce, macroeconomic factors, evolving trends in healthcare, and the impacts and pressures from the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted questions on whether an adequate and thriving workforce is available to address the health needs of Rhode Islanders.

To investigate, the Rhode Island Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) Healthcare Workforce Transformation Team worked with RI EOHHS Ecosystem to integrate licensure data of health workers with wage and demographic data to build a dashboard showing yearly trends in employment counts and wages by profession. The dashboard is public and enables policymakers and residents alike to observe high-level trends in the healthcare workforce from 2010 to the current year; and also allows for viewing these trends by age, race, ethnicity, gender, work setting, school, and healthcare and non-healthcare industry. Given the considerable amount of data and functions embedded in the dashboard, we provide guidance on the information you can see.

Wage, Industry, and Setting

The Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training (DLT) collects wage data from everyone employed in Rhode Island, excluding independent contractors. The collected data includes the quarterly wage for each employee, the name of their employer, and the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code that classifies the type of industry to which an employer belongs.

The dashboard uses the NAICS code to categorize between the ‘healthcare’ setting and the ‘not healthcare’ setting. The phrase ‘setting’ is used interchangeably with ‘industry’. The following industries were categorized as belonging to the ‘healthcare’ setting:

• Ambulatory Health Care Services
• Hospitals
• Nursing and Residential Care Facilities
• Social Assistance

Conversely, the following industries were bucketed under the ‘not healthcare’ setting designation:

• Educational Services
• Employment Services (Temp Worker Proxy)
• Government
• All Other Industries

These industry designations let us know whether those with healthcare licenses stayed within the healthcare industry or if they pursued a career elsewhere.

The quarterly wage data is brought into the dashboard and is reported as the median annualized wage, calculated by multiplying the quarterly wage by four and then finding the annualized wage where half of the workers earned less and half of the workers earned more. The dashboard shows how the median annualized wages trended on a year-over-year basis.

Healthcare Professions and Schools

The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) collects licensure data for each healthcare worker. This data includes the profession of the licensed healthcare worker and is incorporated into the dashboard. As of the date of this article’s publication, the following healthcare professions are included:

• Advanced Practice Nurse
• Applied Behavior Analyst
• Applied Behavior Assistant Analyst
• Chemical Dependency Clinical Supervisor
• Chemical Dependency Professional
• Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)
• Dental Hygienist
• Dentist
• Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW)
• Marriage & Family Therapist Associate
• Marriage and Family Therapist
• Mental Health Counselor
• Mental Health Counselor Associate
• Nursing Assistant (CNA)
• Physician Assistant
• Practical Nurse (LPN)
• Registered Nurse (RN)

In addition, the licensure data collects information on the school or institution that provided each worker with the requisite training or degree necessary to be employed in a given healthcare profession. The dashboard provides the opportunity to compare employment counts and wages for workers by the schools from which they received their relevant education.

Race & Ethnicity, Age, and Gender

The RI EOHHS Ecosystem contains a master race & ethnicity repository that integrates and reconciles and race and Hispanic ethnicity data across several data assets, providing race & ethnicity information for the majority of RI residents. This repository was incorporated into the dashboard to compare employment counts and wages by race & ethnicity. Those who self-reported Hispanic ethnicity were categorized as belonging to the Hispanic race. In addition to race & ethnicity, age, and gender information were brought into the dashboard from the licensure data. Employment counts and wages can be compared by race & ethnicity groups, age groups, and male and female genders.

Bringing it all together

By integrating healthcare licensure data with wage data and race and ethnicity data, the healthcare workforce dashboard allows for an efficient and engaging platform to understand important trends in employment counts and wages and how they may vary by demographic factors, industry, education, and type of profession. This level of insight is crucial to stakeholders and policymakers for short-term and long-term planning as it relates to ensuring that the Rhode Island healthcare workforce is resilient and able to meet the health needs of Rhode Islanders.