The Healthcare Workforce Gap Is Set to Nearly Double by 2040

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 28, 2026--

Covista, America’s largest healthcare educator, today released the Covista Healthcare Workforce Index, new research that is part of the company’s ongoing series examining the healthcare workforce shortage and looks to identify innovative solutions and fresh perspective around how stakeholders can work together to address the structural challenges around it. This Index is built around a model that sizes the U.S. healthcare workforce gap through 2040 and identifies interventions with the greatest potential to close it. The analysis projects that without action, the healthcare workforce shortage is on track to nearly double by 2040—but the model estimates that a combined approach pairing workforce investment with care delivery innovation could close 92% of the projected gap.

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“This shortage is real, and Americans are feeling it. The math in this Index gives us real optimism, but it will take a different approach. We need to invest in capacity for the people who want to do this work, and pair that with innovations in care delivery," said Steve Beard, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Covista. "That capacity is what Covista exists to build, and closing it is the work health systems, policymakers and educators like us have to do together.”

The modeling in the Index estimates the following:

The Covista Healthcare Workforce Index is based upon a model by Oliver Wyman, a leading global management consulting firm with expertise in healthcare and education. The Index draws on more than 60 academic, government, industry and business data sets and interviews with health system leaders. It models headwinds and care delivery innovation at the most likely scenario, based on current adoption trends. Supply actions are modeled at the best case: supply has historically been underinvested, and the Index is meant to project what's possible if that changes rather than projecting today's underinvestment forward.

Talent Pipeline: Underutilized and Underfunded
The Index estimates that investing in talent could have an outsized impact on the shortage. Despite this potential, health systems have historically prioritized short-term fixes over the structural investment supply actions require—leaving this lever the most underutilized. The Index models action across three areas:

Care Delivery Innovation: A Real Accelerant, But Not a Replacement for Talent
The Index estimates that AI, breakthrough therapeutics and redesigned care models can meaningfully ease pressure on the demand side of the shortage, but cannot close the gap alone. Their impact is also uncertain and interdependent—AI's promise hinges on adoption and trust, new therapeutics require affordable access and care model redesign depends on having clinicians available to staff new settings in the first place. The Index models three areas of impact:

“The opportunity in front of healthcare right now is real—AI, new therapeutics and smarter care models can ease pressure on this shortage in ways we couldn't have delivered a decade ago. But every one of those tools depends on having enough clinicians to put them to work,” said Michael Betz, Chief Growth and Innovation Officer, Covista and President, Walden University. “Technology can offer efficiencies; it can't do the job. Our focus has to be building tools that free up our clinicians to do the thing they love the most: caring for patients.”

Closing the Gap Will Take Coordinated Action Across the Healthcare Ecosystem
No single stakeholder can solve a structural shortage this size alone. But the Index is more than just a warning. The path forward will take health systems, policymakers and educators moving together—not just treating symptoms of the shortage, but reshaping the care delivery model and the talent pipeline that feeds it. Sustained over the coming years, the Index projects that kind of coordinated investment could close the gap. Each stakeholder has a distinct role to play. According to the Index, key actions for each stakeholder group include:

To download the full report, please visit www.Covista.com/Covista-Healthcare-Workforce-Index.

About Covista
Covista (NYSE: CVSA) is America's largest healthcare educator, serving 100,000 students and supported by a community of 400,000 alumni across five accredited institutions. Through personalized, tech-enabled education powered by 10,000 faculty and colleagues, Covista expands access to healthcare careers and addresses the U.S. healthcare workforce shortage at scale. Covista is the parent company of American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, Chamberlain University, Ross University School of Medicine, Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine and Walden University. For more information, visit covista.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

 

To learn more about the Covista Healthcare Workforce Index visit www.Covista.com/Covista-Healthcare-Workforce-Index.

To learn more about the Covista Healthcare Workforce Index visit www.Covista.com/Covista-Healthcare-Workforce-Index.

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary's Parliament voted on Monday to lift the parliamentary immunity of three lawmakers, including the country's prime minister, Péter Magyar, as prosecutors proceed with ongoing criminal investigations.

Prosecutors are investigating Magyar on suspicion of misdemeanor theft after he allegedly took a man’s mobile phone during a nightclub altercation and threw it into the Danube River in June 2024, nearly two years before his party won a landslide election that unseated former populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Magyar has denied that his conduct amounted to theft and called the case, which alleges damages scarcely exceeding $300, politically motivated.

He has also criticized prosecutors for requesting the lifting of his immunity at the same time as that of two former Orbán-era ministers, whose alleged crimes involved misusing tens of millions of dollars in public funds and accepting millions more in bribes.

Prior to the vote, Magyar told lawmakers that he had “not committed a crime, I take responsibility for all my actions.”

“Anyone who has nothing to hide comes forward openly,” he said, referring to his earlier request that his party vote in favor of lifting his immunity.

Immunity for members of Parliament, a common practice in European democracies, is designed to protect lawmakers from political persecution, allowing them to perform their duties and express opinions freely without fear of arrest or lawsuits from the government.

Hungary's former government under right-wing Orbán had sought to have Magyar's immunity lifted when he was a lawmaker in the European Parliament, but the body repeatedly refused.

Lawmakers on Monday also voted to suspend the immunity of two former ministers in Orbán's government who are suspected of, separately, criminal mismanagement of 17.3 billion forints ($53.6 million) of public funds and accepting more than 12 billion forints ($37.2 million) in bribes and kickbacks.

The cases involve some of the highest-level officials from Orbán’s government implicated in crimes now being investigated under Magyar’s new administration, part of a sweeping effort to uncover what the government describes as years of massive fraud and theft of public funds under Orbán.

Parliament on Monday lifted the immunity of Balázs Hankó, the former Minister of Culture under Orbán's government, who is alleged to have overseen the misuse of around $53.6 million from Hungary's National Cultural Fund.

Prosecutors allege Hankó personally intervened to award money from the fund — intended to support cultural projects — based on political considerations, and to cover campaign costs for Orbán's Fidesz party in the run-up to the election in April.

Prosecutors also suspect Orbán's former Development Minister Miklós Seszták, whose immunity was also suspended, of accepting more than $37.2 million in bribes and kickbacks connected to vehicle procurements under Hungary’s state bus company, as well as to state construction projects.

Lawmakers from Fidesz and its coalition party, the Christian Democrats, did not take part in Monday’s vote, calling the charges against their lawmakers political tyranny by Magyar’s government.

None of the lawmakers whose immunity was lifted have been indicted.

Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar, center, attends an extraordinary session of the National Assembly, in Budapest, Hungary, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. (Zsolt Szigetvary/MTI via AP)

FILE - Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar holds an extraordinary press briefing following a voting on the 17th amendment to the Fundamental Law in the parliament building in Budapest, Hungary, July 13, 2026. (Tamas Purger/MTI via AP, File)