The fastest-growing roles in healthcare are the hardest to source
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An empty, ready outpatient exam room in soft daylight, representing advanced practice capacity built ahead of demand.

The fastest-growing roles in healthcare are the hardest to source

August 21, 2026
|By Marissa Cohen

Advanced practice nurses are projected to grow 12.4% through 2030, according to a new workforce report covered this week by Staffing Industry Analysts. Nurse practitioner roles are projected to rise 40% between 2024 and 2034, a pace the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks third among all US occupations, ahead of data scientists and physician assistants. Allied health demand is climbing at a similar pace, led by imaging.

Growth this fast doesn’t show up on the schedule overnight

Nurse practitioners, certified registered nurse anesthetists, and nurse midwives all fall under the advanced practice designation, and each role requires years of graduate-level clinical preparation beyond an RN license. That timeline is the real story behind the growth rate: demand is accelerating faster than any single facility, or any single graduate program, can expand supply to match it. It’s compounded by a workforce now spanning five clinical generations working side by side, each with different expectations for how and when they’ll work.

Part of the pressure is coming from primary care access gaps. More than 7,700 areas nationwide carry a federal shortage designation for primary care, affecting an estimated 76 million people, and closing those gaps would take roughly 13,254 additional primary care providers. Advanced practice nurses are absorbing a growing share of that load.

Full practice authority is expanding faster than the supply that could fill it

About 29 states plus DC now grant nurse practitioners full practice authority to diagnose, prescribe, and manage care without a supervising physician, up from 22 in 2020. Each state that expands scope opens a market for independent NP practice, but it spreads existing supply across more settings rather than growing the supply itself. Every facility in a full-practice-authority state is now competing for the same pool of clinicians as independent practices and telehealth platforms that weren’t competitors five years ago.

CRNAs face a sharper version of the same constraint. They already account for more than 80% of anesthesia providers in rural counties, and industry estimates put the national anesthesia provider gap as high as 12,500 by 2033. For an ASC, CRNA availability is often the single factor that decides whether a full case schedule runs on a given day.

Allied health is growing just as fast, led by imaging

A recent industry workforce report found demand for CT technologists has more than doubled since 2021 — the most sustained growth among the top five allied specialties tracked. Respiratory therapy and lab roles are following a similar curve as imaging and diagnostic volume outpaces the number of new techs entering the field each year. The report also points to a partial offset: AI-enabled task automation could return nurses 13% to 21% of their working hours, roughly 240 to 400 hours per nurse annually, time that could be redirected toward the clinical work that’s hardest to cover.

Five ways to build advanced practice and allied health bench depth before the gap widens

  1. Map coverage risk role by role, not unit by unit. Advanced practice and allied health gaps don’t distribute evenly across a facility. Pull open-shift data by specific role (NP, CRNA, CT tech, respiratory therapist) to find where the real exposure sits before it shows up as a canceled case or a delayed scan.
  2. Shorten credentialing for a credential-heavy workforce. Advanced practice and imaging roles carry more license and certification layers than general nursing. A credentialing process measured in hours instead of weeks is what turns a qualified, available clinician into a covered shift, especially as the pool of available talent keeps shrinking.
  3. Build continuity through clinicians who already know the facility. Returning, already-credentialed advanced practice and allied professionals need less orientation and carry less clinical risk than a new name on the schedule. A managed pool of returning clinicians converts one-off coverage into dependable bench depth, the same flexibility clinicians increasingly expect from their schedules.
  4. Track scope-of-practice changes in every state you operate in. Full practice authority status, supervision requirements, and transition-to-practice rules are shifting most years now. A facility that misses a scope change either under-uses NPs it already has on staff or gets caught unprepared when a competing practice model appears in its market.
  5. Give clinical and finance leaders the same forecast. Advanced practice and allied health coverage gaps carry both a clinical cost and a premium-labor cost. Sharing one forecast with nursing leadership and finance keeps the conversation focused on preventing gaps instead of debating the bill afterward.

The roles growing fastest are the roles worth building a bench for now

A facility that waits for an open CRNA shift or an unfilled NP role to become urgent will be negotiating from a position of scarcity, in a market where that scarcity is structural rather than seasonal. The advanced practice and allied health roles growing fastest today are exactly the roles worth building bench depth for now, while there’s still room to plan instead of scramble. Healthcare hiring remains structurally difficult across nearly every clinical role, and the facilities that treat flexibility as infrastructure now will be the ones with options later.

Frequently asked questions

Why are advanced practice roles growing faster than registered nursing overall?

Advanced practice roles are absorbing demand created by primary care access gaps and physician shortages, particularly in rural and underserved areas. Expanding scope-of-practice laws are also widening where these clinicians can deliver care independently, which increases the settings competing for the same limited supply.

Does expanding full practice authority solve the advanced practice shortage?

Expanding full practice authority widens where nurse practitioners can practice independently. It does not increase how many NPs graduate each year, so the underlying supply constraint remains and facilities in newly expanded states should expect more competition for the same clinicians.

How large is the CT technologist gap, and why is it growing?

A recent industry workforce report found demand for CT technologists has more than doubled since 2021, the sharpest sustained growth among the allied specialties tracked, driven by rising imaging and diagnostic volume outpacing new graduates entering the field.