WHITE PAPER
Sustaining Effective Care Teams During Staff Shortages: Clinical Leader Insights
Executive Summary
Healthcare staffing shortages remain one of the most urgent operational and clinical challenges facing provider organizations today. While many healthcare leaders have made meaningful progress in stabilizing staffing levels, new research suggests the pressure is far from over.
Inovalon surveyed more than 230 clinical leaders across hospitals and post-acute residential facilities in February 2026 to better understand the current levels of healthcare staffing and workforce turnover, the link between staffing levels, retention, and risk of patient harm, strategies clinical leaders have deployed to improve staffing levels, and the strategic role of workforce management technology in supporting provider teams and patient care.
The findings reveal a complex reality: despite significant efforts to improve staffing levels over the past two years, most organizations reported they are understaffed, with annual staff turnover frequently exceeding 20%.
Clinical leaders report investing substantial time and energy into recruitment, retention, compensation adjustments, leadership improvements, and workforce development initiatives to keep teams staffed and engaged. But as organizations fall further from full staffing, staffing-related challenges intensify. This includes insufficient staff experience, overreliance on agency labor, retention struggles, and widespread disruption from unplanned absences and callouts.
The research also points to a growing disconnect between staffing progress and patient care demands. As patient acuity rises and staffing improvements begin to slow, healthcare organizations may be reaching the limits of manual, human-driven workforce strategies alone.
Advanced staff scheduling is emerging as an important strategic tool for strengthening staff engagement, improving retention, and supporting safer patient care.
For healthcare leaders navigating ongoing workforce instability, the message is clear: solving healthcare staffing shortages will require more than hiring alone.
Key findings include:
- Only 25% of provider organizations describe themselves as fully staffed
- Nearly half of clinical leaders report annual staff turnover of 20% or more
- 73% of those challenged by staffing shortages say that unplanned callouts are an issue
- 96% believe understaffing increases the likelihood employees will leave their jobs
- Staffing challenges are viewed as a greater patient safety barrier than gaps in safety culture or analytics
- Leaders expect staffing improvement to slow over the next two years
- 67% see significant value in mobile self-scheduling and shift flexibility tools
- 62% see significant value in technology that helps reduce callout disruptions
