title: Will the NP workforce grow in the future? New forecasts and implications for healthcare delivery.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The nurse practitioner (NP) workforce has been a focus of considerable policy interest recently, particularly as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act may place additional demands on the healthcare professional workforce. The NP workforce has been growing rapidly in recent years, but fluctuation in enrollments in the past decades has resulted in a wide range of forecasts.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To forecast the future NP workforce using a novel method that has been applied to the registered nurse and physician workforces and is robust to fluctuating enrollment trends.
  
  
  METHODS
  An age-cohort regression-based model was applied to the current and historical workforce, which was then forecasted to future years assuming stable age effects and a continuation of recent cohort trends.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 6798 NPs who were identified as having completed NP training in the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses between 1992 and 2008.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The future workforce is projected to grow to 244,000 in 2025, an increase of 94% from 128,000 in 2008. If NPs are defined more restrictively as those who self-identify their position title as "NP," supply is projected to grow from 86,000 to 198,000 (130%) over this period.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The large projected increase in NP supply is higher and more grounded than other forecasts and has several implications: NPs will likely fulfill a substantial amount of future demand for care. Furthermore, as the ratio of NPs to Nurse Practitioners to physicians will surely grow, there could be implications for quality of care and for the configuration of future care delivery systems.
authors.affiliation: RAND Health, Boston, MA, USA. auerbach@rand.org
authors.forename: David I
authors.initials: DI
authors.lastname: Auerbach
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends*; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006280:Health Workforce / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009722:Nurse Practitioners / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*