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Healthcare Workforce Data Center

The Department of Health Professions Healthcare Workforce Data Center works to improve the data collection and measurement of Virginia’s healthcare workforce through regular assessment of workforce supply and demand issues among the 80 professions and 350,000 practitioners licensed in Virginia by DHP.

DHP healthcare workforce data is provided online to ensure accessibility of the findings among healthcare decision makers, hospital systems, academic institutions and constituents statewide.

Data Collection

The Virginia Department of Health Professions provides voluntary surveys to Department of Health Professions’ licensees through the Department’s online application and renewal processes.  Survey reports for each profession are released a few months after the end of each renewal cycle.

Surveys in current collection, grouped by renewal date, include: 

Every March: Assisted Living Facility Administrators Dental Hygienists Dentists Nursing Home Administrators Every June: Clinical Psychologists Licensed Professional Counselors June, Odd Years Licensed Clinical Social Workers

Every December Audiologists Pharmacists Pharmacy Technicians Speech-Language Pathologists December, Odd Years Physician Assistants† December, Even Years Doctors of Osteopathy† Medical Doctors† Physical Therapists Physical Therapy Assistants

Every August* Certified Nurse Aides Licensed Practical Nurses Nurse Practitioners** Registered Nurses

*Nurses renew biennially during their birth month on an ongoing basis.  Our data collection period for nurses runs from September to August.  Each survey report and data release is based on a rolling two years of data.
** The first Nurse Practitioner collection ran from March 2011 to February 2013. Subsequent  collections will conform to the Nursing  schedule.
†Renew every other year during their birth month. 

Future Goals

Initially, the HWDC provided analytic support for surveys created by DHP’s regulatory boards or committees of professionals.  Over the past few years the HWDC has adopted a standardized survey template.  Since our renewal cycles are measured in years, the HWDC is continuing to implement the standardized template for currently surveyed professions, as well as expanding it to new professions.  We are currently developing a standardized processing code to match our standardized surveys.  This code will allow for the efficient and timely processing of HWDC survey results.
Our next step is to integrate HWDC datasets into an integrated, searchable, multi-professional database.  This will allow for multi-professional analysis of Virginia’s health workforce based on concepts and themes such as geography, patient population, provider specialty, education, income levels or demographics.  This database and our datasets will be available to qualified researchers who meet the strict confidentiality standards.  Future goals include developing an online data and mapping center to make our results more accessible to researchers, policymakers, providers and the public. 

The healthcare workforce operates largely within a national market and the HWDC is working with HRSA’s National Center for Health Workforce Analysis as it develops national standards and minimum datasets.

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DHP Healthcare Workforce Data Center
E-mail: hwdc@dhp.virginia.gov
Elizabeth A. Carter, Ph.D., Director