From AI to Allied Health: Five Workforce Priorities for 2026 

Highlights

• AI readiness starts with workforce participation. Involve employees in identifying problems, designing solutions and shaping responsible implementation.
• A flexible, supported workforce is a stronger workforce. Safety investments, layered workforce models and career pathways help health systems retain talent and respond to changing needs.
• Better workforce decisions require better data. Leaders need clear insight into staffing, scheduling, productivity, and demand to act proactively.

Table of contents

AI: Prepare people before deploying technology

Workforce safety: Make protection visible

Workforce flexibility: Plan beyond the day-to-day

Upskilled allied health: Build the talent you need

Labor productivity: Look at the whole picture

Preparing for what comes next

For years, hospitals operated within a familiar framework: inpatient care as the center of the system, fee-for-service as the dominant payment model and a workforce structure that, while strained, was largely predictable. Then COVID-19 accelerated changes already underway and introduced new disruptions, from supply chain instability and the Great Resignation to shifting care models, demographic pressure and artificial intelligence.

At Aya Ideas Retreat 2026, Aaron Mauck, chief research officer and co-founder of Oboe Healthcare Insights, offered a simple reminder during the State of the Industry session: history doesn’t end. Healthcare leaders must prepare for continued change in care delivery, workforce needs and organizational strategy.

The sessions that followed explored what that preparation looks like in practice: involving employees in AI adoption, fostering a safer work environment, building flexible workforce models, strengthening talent pipelines and using data to make better productivity decisions.

AI: Prepare people before deploying technology

AI readiness starts with the workforce. At Mayo Clinic, the organization set a goal to create 1,000 AI agents, or task-specific digital tools that support daily workflows. But Alissa Zimmerman, vice chair of enterprise nursing, focused less on the technology itself and more on building employee capability.

Mayo asked its 26,000 nursing employees to identify workflow problems. “Give us your best ideas for where your problems exist, not where AI is needed,” Zimmerman said. The effort generated 458 submissions in six weeks. Thirty semifinalists developed simple prototypes, with five ideas advancing for further development.

WellSpan Health applied Workforce AI to another practical challenge. Before implementation, nurse managers and schedulers were spending more than 10 hours a week on staffing and scheduling. Through a phased rollout, WellSpan implemented New Optimized Schedule, a capability within the Predictive Scheduling module, across 57 units at six hospitals. The feature saved approximately 24 hours of work per four-week schedule period.

In a separate session on responsible AI, Aya Healthcare’s Jason Drucker explained how LotusOne, Aya’s healthcare workforce management platform, can organize candidate data and highlight comparisons while keeping users in control: “The AI organizes, the AI highlights, but humans decide.”

The takeaway: AI works best when it solves real problems, involves the people affected and preserves human oversight.

Workforce safety: Make protection visible

Workplace safety is a retention strategy. Erin Jayne, who moderated the workforce safety session, noted that 65% of nurses who experience workplace violence feel anxious about returning to work.

At Allina Health, Tracy Kirby described investments in access controls, weapons detection, cameras, training and employee duress devices. The system also introduced “disengagement” training, helping staff recognize when entering a volatile situation could put them at greater risk. Allina’s most recent data showed a 20% decrease in workplace violence, or about 150 fewer incidents in one year.

At Oregon Health & Science University, Claudia Aime described a proactive approach that included a comprehensive site survey and a frontline-driven safety task force. Her advice was simple: “Start by listening to your staff” and “don’t wait on perfection.”

The takeaway: Safety efforts gain traction when employees help identify vulnerabilities and can see action follow.

Workforce flexibility: Plan beyond the day-to-day

Workforce flexibility isn’t one program or one pool. It’s a set of layers designed to respond to different needs, from predictable leaves to same-day callouts and seasonal demand.

At Michigan Medicine, Michelle Bero described a shift from just-in-time coverage to proactive planning across four hospitals and a supplemental staffing department with more than 800 employees. The approach allows leaders to plan for known vacancies, maternity leaves and leaves of absence rather than waiting until a unit is short.

At Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, Kate Colfer uses local and regional float pools, an internal agency, external per diem staff and flexible core-team roles. Working with Aya’s workforce advisory team, her team analyzed variation in patient volume across units to determine how large its medical-surgical internal agency needed to be and how it could work with other flexibility layers. Colfer described the goal for scheduling this way: “There’s so much data and intelligence out there that really this should just be a validation process.”

At UC San Diego Health, Leah Adrid uses internal per diem staff for callouts, travelers for vacancies and long-term leaves, and a local registry for sick-call coverage. By analyzing sick calls, patient volume and acuity, along with community events, she can forecast traveler needs six to nine months ahead. Adrid also builds requested time off into contracts, recognizing that “they too have a life.”

The takeaway: Flexibility works when organizations match each resource to the right need and plan ahead.

Upskilled allied health: Build the talent you need

Allied health shortages require a strategic solution, not a short-term scramble. As Tim Wiseman of Corewell Health put it, “We can’t recruit our way out of it.”

Health systems are building clearer pathways into medical assistants, imaging, respiratory therapy and nuclear medicine by introducing students to healthcare careers earlier, helping employees develop new skills and partnering with colleges.

In California’s Coachella Valley, Benjamin Farber of Eisenhower Health described limited local education options, high program costs and many working adults who couldn’t afford to leave their jobs to pursue new careers. Eisenhower partnered with online programs, became a clinical training site and helped expand pathways into roles such as nuclear medicine technology and nursing.

At IU Health, Michelle Mitchell described another gap: online-certified medical assistants who lacked hands-on experience. The health system developed a boot camp to build clinical skills and a peer mentoring model to help newer employees strengthen communication and patient interaction.

As Community Health Network’s Jamie Phillippe described it, the goal is to “grow where you’re planted.” The organization puts that idea into practice through paid training and advancement opportunities. Employees can move from entry-level roles into a 14-week medical assistant program while continuing to earn a full-time salary and benefits. Selected participants can then receive support to pursue additional education, including nursing. Phillippe said the organization typically sees retention rates of 90% or higher at two years across its workforce development programs.

The takeaway: Upskilling expands the talent pipeline while giving employees a practical path to advance.

Labor productivity: Look at the whole picture

Labor productivity connects staffing, scheduling, retention, absenteeism, quality, safety and financial performance. Sutter Health’s Sarah Kiyoi cautioned leaders, “You can’t take ‘your gut’ to position control. You need solid numbers.”

Kiyoi described a department that appeared fully staffed but was losing five to seven FTEs each month to leave and sick calls. The department had no travelers, yet premium pay was rising. A deeper review also found that assignments weren’t aligned with the team’s skill mix.

Leaders used data to identify the underlying gaps, bring in travelers in the short term and develop a more realistic roster strategy for the long term.

The takeaway: Sustainable productivity requires leaders who understand the data, see the trade-offs and can connect daily decisions to broader workforce strategy.

Preparing for what comes next

Healthcare’s next chapter won’t be defined by a single solution. It will be shaped by leaders willing to keep adapting, listen to their workforce and connect strategy to the realities of daily care delivery.

History isn’t ending. It’s being written by the decisions healthcare leaders make today.