Hospitals must redesign work to maximize efficiency, patient outcomes and staff satisfaction as the labor market tightens in the decade ahead, according to a report released today by the AHA's Long-Range Policy Committee. Among other recommendations, the report encourages hospitals to work with educators to update traditional degree programs for health care workers, and with managers to address the needs of a multi-generational workforce. In developing the report, the committee "focused on changing environments - changes in how we will deliver health care and in the demographics and cultural attitudes of the future workforce pool," said AHA Chairman Richard P. de Filippi, who chaired the committee in 2009. "It will be critical for us to work with these new realities in devising strategies for best utilizing scarce human resources - strategies that include using new technologies, accommodating the blend of work cultures and habits of multiple generations and retaining existing employees well into traditional retirement years."