Healthcare Workforce Planning Works Best Before a Requisition Exists

By the time a critical healthcare role becomes an urgent requisition, much of the useful planning window has already closed.

The vacancy may reflect rising patient demand, a new facility, recurring turnover, retirement, migration, seasonal pressure, or an occupation with a long training path. Recruiting can respond to the open seat. It cannot instantly change the supply of qualified people or recover knowledge that has already left.

Keisha Malivert of AdventHealth described a more proactive model during “The Strategic Edge” at Indeed FutureWorks 2026. Effective planning, she argued, brings together three sets of signals: operational demand, workforce metrics, and market strategy.

The value lies in reading them together. Each explains a different part of the staffing risk, and no single dashboard can substitute for the combination.

Operational demand shows the work that will exist

Patient volumes, service-line growth, hospital expansions, acuity, and seasonality create the demand side of the plan. They help an organization estimate not only how many people may be needed, but which capabilities, locations, and shifts will carry the pressure.

This view must be close to operations. A hiring target derived only from last year’s headcount will miss a new clinic, a changing patient population, or a service that is becoming harder to deliver safely.

Demand also has a time dimension. Some needs can be met through scheduling and cross-training. Others require years of education or credentials. The longer the preparation path, the earlier the signal must enter workforce planning.

Workforce metrics show the capacity likely to remain

Turnover, vacancy rates, overtime, premium labor, absence, retirement exposure, and internal mobility reveal the condition of the current workforce.

One metric can hide another. A unit may meet staffing requirements while relying on unsustainable overtime. A moderate vacancy rate may conceal the loss of highly experienced employees. Low turnover can still be fragile if a large cohort is nearing retirement.

Quality matters alongside quantity. Replacing an experienced clinician with a new hire may restore headcount without restoring the same judgment, mentoring capacity, or team stability. Plans need to account for time to proficiency and the people required to support it.

At AdventHealth’s scale, the challenge is substantial. Malivert described annual hiring of roughly 25,000 to 27,000 clinical and nonclinical employees. At that volume, workforce planning cannot remain a series of isolated recruiting requests.

Market strategy shows where talent can come from

Demographic migration, local training capacity, competitor expansion, compensation, housing, and commuting patterns shape the external supply.

An organization opening a facility may understand patient demand and still misjudge the workforce market around it. The same region attracting new residents may have too few licensed professionals, or the available talent may live beyond a workable commute. A nearby employer’s expansion can change supply faster than annual planning captures.

Market intelligence turns those shifts into choices. The organization may build educational partnerships, recruit into adjacent occupations, redesign schedules, develop internal pathways, or sequence an expansion differently.

So what makes the plan operational?

The three signals need a shared planning rhythm. Operations, finance, talent acquisition, learning, and clinical leaders should examine the same forecast, with named assumptions and time horizons. A predicted gap should have an owner and a response before it becomes a requisition.

Different gaps require different levers. A short seasonal spike may justify flexible staffing. Persistent turnover calls for attention to management, workload, schedules, and employee experience. A long-term shortage may require scholarships, school partnerships, paid training, immigration support, or changes to how work is divided across roles.

Plans also need scenario ranges rather than one precise headcount. What happens if turnover rises, an opening is delayed, or patient demand exceeds the forecast? Which roles become the limiting constraint? Which interventions can begin now without overcommitting?

In healthcare, a vacancy affects more than recruiting performance. It can change patient access, employee fatigue, safety, and the viability of a service. That makes workforce planning an operating discipline rather than an HR exercise.

The requisition remains necessary, but it should be the final expression of a plan already in motion. When demand, current capacity, and market supply are connected early, hiring has a better chance of supporting care before an empty seat becomes the most visible part of the problem.