Healthcare Workforce Shortage Projected to Nearly Double by 2040, Adding $1,250 a Year to Family Costs

The average American family already pays roughly $430 a year in hidden costs tied to the healthcare worker shortage, through overtime pay, temporary staffing, and avoidable emergency room visits. According to a new analysis from Covista, described as America's largest healthcare educator, that figure could nearly triple to $1,250 a year by 2040 if nothing changes.

The numbers come from the Covista Healthcare Workforce Index, released September 28, 2026, and built with Oliver Wyman, a global management consulting firm. The model draws on more than 60 academic, government, and industry data sets, according to Business Wire. Its headline finding: the U.S. healthcare workforce gap is on track to nearly double by 2040, potentially leaving the country short more than 2 million healthcare workers, Covista Chief Growth and Innovation Officer Michael Betz told the Daily Caller News Foundation, as reported by WorldNetDaily.

The Shortage Is Already Here

This isn't a future problem dressed up as a current one. The National Institute for Health Care Management's 2026 figures show more than 108 million Americans already live in primary care shortage areas, according to Healthcare Dive. The average wait time to see a physician now runs 38 days, nearly three times what many experts consider medically appropriate, according to TIME.

The workforce is also aging out faster than it's being replaced. Fewer than 17% of physicians are under age 40, while roughly one in five is over 60, TIME reported. A recent Harris Poll found more than half of healthcare workers are considering leaving their jobs entirely.

Michael Dill, director of workforce studies at the Association of American Medical Colleges, told the Daily Caller News Foundation the core problem is structural. "Supply has not kept up with demand," Dill said. He pointed specifically to a bottleneck that outlasts any single administration: the number of U.S. medical schools has grown significantly over the past 20 years, but residency and fellowship positions, the training slots physicians actually need to practice in their chosen specialties, have not grown at the same pace.

That's a government-funding problem as much as a workforce one. Residency slots are heavily tied to federal funding streams, and if Washington isn't expanding that pipeline, adding more medical school seats alone won't fix the shortage.

Reading the Fine Print

Covista's own modeling claims a coordinated response, pairing investment in training capacity with care-delivery innovation, could close 92% of the projected gap. Steve Beard, Covista's chairman and CEO, said in a statement that "this shortage is real, and Americans are feeling it," and called for investment in capacity paired with innovation in care delivery.

Covista is not a neutral research outfit. It's a healthcare education company, and Betz also serves as president of Walden University, an online institution that trains healthcare workers. The firm that built this index is also the firm positioned to sell the training programs it recommends as the fix. That doesn't mean the underlying numbers are wrong. The AAMC's Dill, an independent source with no financial stake in Covista's products, backs up the core supply-demand mismatch. But readers should know who's doing the counting and who benefits from the prescribed remedy.

According to Healthcare Dive's breakdown of the model, investing in non-traditional students such as career-changers could close about 7% of the projected gap. Opening more medical training slots could close roughly a quarter. Reducing burnout and improving retention, especially among younger clinicians already eyeing the exits, could address another 25%. AI tools that automate administrative work could close up to 37% of the shortfall, though the model estimates that gain gets offset by about 18% because easier access tends to generate more patient demand. A shift toward preventive rather than reactive "sick care" medicine could shave off another 13%.

Losing Trained Workers Overseas

Compounding the domestic shortfall, countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United Arab Emirates are actively recruiting U.S.-trained clinicians through streamlined licensing pathways, according to TIME. Every physician or nurse who trains in American programs and then leaves for easier licensing abroad is a loss the shortage numbers already account for.

Covista estimates closing the nursing shortage alone could save nearly 100,000 lives cumulatively by 2040, and closing the physician gap could add more than six months to average U.S. life expectancy. Those are projections from a single model, not verified outcomes. Whether Congress moves to lift Medicare's residency funding caps, a lever within federal control that both Covista and the AAMC point to as central, remains the open question nobody in this reporting has answered.