One Plan, Twelve Actions, Named Owners: The Laboratory Scientist Workforce Plan for Fiscal Years 2029 Through 2033
Student Name
American College of Education
HLTH5663: Human Resources in Healthcare Organizations
Module 6 Assignment
Instructor Name
August 7, 2028
The Problem and the Target
The composite three-hospital system's laboratories fill 58.5 of 68 budgeted medical laboratory scientist positions and cover the difference with nine travelers. On current trends, test volume growth, retirements and turnover would leave the laboratories about 15 positions short by year five. The earlier modules of this course built the parts of a response: a larger and more reliable pipeline, a selection process designed around credential gates, a pay package that brings the system to market, a fair approach to performance problems and a retention strategy aimed at workload, schedules and growth. This plan consolidates them.
The target is to reduce the projected gap to fewer than two positions by fiscal year 2033 and to reduce traveler positions from nine to three by the end of fiscal year 2030. The national context makes the target demanding. The most recent national vacancy survey, for 2024, found that vacancy rates had fallen since 2022 but remained above pre-pandemic levels, and that retirement rates had risen in 10 of the 17 laboratory departments surveyed (Garcia et al., 2025). A workforce plan that cannot say who does what by when is a description of a problem, not a plan.
Pipeline Actions
Action 1: expand clinical rotation seats for the regional university's scientist program from 10 to 16 a year, beginning with the class starting in January 2029; owner, the laboratory education coordinator. Action 2: make conditional offers to final-year students each fall, contingent on certification and licensure, paying them as trainees while the state processes their licenses, beginning in October 2028; owner, the human resources recruiter for laboratory services. Action 3: launch the technician-to-scientist bridge program with tuition support for four technicians a year in exchange for a two-year commitment, first cohort in August 2029; owner, the human resources business partner. Action 4: recruit two internationally educated scientists a year through one credential evaluation partner, first hires expected by July 2029; owner, the recruiter.
These actions are expected to raise eligible hires from eight a year to ten from fiscal year 2030. The task force report on the laboratory workforce argued that strengthening the flow of new people into the profession is central to meeting future demand (Bennett et al., 2014), and the actions here are the parts of that pipeline this system can control.
Selection and Pay Actions
Action 5: adopt the structured interview and 45-minute bench exercise for all scientist hiring, with interview questions written from the job analysis and interviewers trained, by December 2028; owners, the laboratory director and the recruiter. Selection outcomes will be reviewed by demographic group every year. Action 6: implement the pay package, a market adjustment of the base rate to $38.50, a night differential of $5.50 and a three-level career ladder, effective with the first pay period of fiscal year 2029; owner, the compensation manager. Action 7: convert six traveler positions to employees by September 2030, starting with night positions at the two community hospitals; owner, the laboratory director.
Performance and Retention Actions
Action 8: add a hard stop in the laboratory information system that blocks release of results on an analyzer with an unresolved quality control failure, by March 2029, and apply the just culture framework and the consistency check from Module 4 to every performance case; owners, the laboratory information systems analyst and the human resources business partner. Action 9: add two night laboratory assistants at the community hospitals and cap mandatory overtime at two shifts per scientist per month, by January 2029; owner, the laboratory director. Action 10: place a second scientist on call at night at each community hospital for trauma activations, by January 2029; owner, the laboratory director.
Action 11: move to self-scheduling with permanent shift options and every-third-weekend rotation, beginning with the schedule period starting in April 2029; owner, the laboratory operations manager. Action 12: launch first-year mentoring and certification support, including paid study time and examination fees, for all scientists hired from October 2028; owner, the laboratory education coordinator. Every action has one owner, even where several people contribute, so that a missed date has a single person to answer for it.
Budget Against the Cost of Doing Nothing
The plan's gross annual cost at full operation is about $770,000: the pay package, $518,000; retention actions, $150,000; bridge tuition, about $36,000; international recruitment, about $24,000; and preceptor time for the additional rotation seats, about $40,000. Its offsets are about $450,000 from converting six travelers and reducing turnover, as estimated in Module 3, plus savings on replacement and coverage from the retention actions. The net cost is about $300,000 a year once offsets are realized in fiscal year 2030.
The alternative is not free. If nothing is done, the projected gap of 15 positions by fiscal year 2033, if covered by travelers, would add roughly $1.1 million in agency premiums every year, and more in overtime, delayed results and the departures that understaffing causes. The plan therefore costs less than the problem it addresses by its third year, and the difference grows each year after that.
How the Pieces Depend on Each Other
The twelve actions are not independent, and their order matters. The pay package comes first because it makes the traveler conversions possible: few travelers will accept a staff position that pays below the market, and without conversions the package's largest offset disappears. The night assistants and on-call scientist come early because the conversions will place new employees on the very night shifts where solitary work and overtime have driven people out; a converted traveler who is left alone with trauma blood bank work in the first month may leave as quickly as the last one. The hard stop in the information system comes before the first cohort of new graduates reaches independent night work, so that the least experienced scientists work behind the strongest safeguard. The pipeline actions produce their first eligible hires only in fiscal year 2030, which is why the plan relies on retention to hold the gap steady in the meantime.
Governance and Measures
The human resources committee will review one dashboard each quarter: the projected gap in positions, updated with actual hires, departures and volume; turnover overall and within the first three years; hires by source against targets; traveler positions; mandatory overtime shifts; and the status of each of the twelve actions against its date. The workforce projection will be rebuilt every six months. If turnover in the first three years has not fallen by fiscal year 2030 or eligible hires remain below nine a year, the committee will ask the owners of the relevant actions to present a revised approach rather than continuing unchanged.
Risks
Three risks could derail the plan. First, competing laboratories may match the pay increase, reducing its effect; the plan relies more on retention and pipeline than on pay for this reason. Second, the regional university could reduce its program's enrollment, which would weaken the largest source of new scientists; the education coordinator will meet with the program director each semester and the bridge program provides a second internal source. Third, test volume could grow faster than projected, especially if molecular testing is brought in-house; that decision should include a staffing plan and not be made separately from this one. The authors of the national 2022 laboratory vacancy count urged employers to put as much effort into keeping laboratory staff as into finding new ones (Garcia et al., 2024), and this plan follows that advice: most of its actions are about keeping the scientists the system already has.
References
Bennett, A., Garcia, E., Schulze, M., Bailey, M., Doyle, K., Finn, W., Glenn, D., Holladay, E. B., Jacobs, J., Kroft, S., Patterson, S., Petersen, J., Tanabe, P., & Zaleski, S. (2014). Building a laboratory workforce to meet the future: ASCP Task Force on the Laboratory Professionals Workforce. American Journal of Clinical Pathology, 141(2), 154-167. https://doi.org/10.1309/AJCPIV2OG8TEGHHZ
Garcia, E., Diaz, J., Kundu, I., Kelly, M., & Soles, R. (2025). The American Society for Clinical Pathology 2024 vacancy survey of medical laboratories in the United States. American Journal of Clinical Pathology, 164(5), 759-777. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcp/aqaf101
Garcia, E., Kundu, I., Kelly, M., & Soles, R. (2024). The American Society for Clinical Pathology 2022 vacancy survey of medical laboratories in the United States. American Journal of Clinical Pathology, 161(3), 289-304. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcp/aqad149
How this HLTH 5663 Module 6 example is structured
HLTH 5663 Module 6 usually consolidates the pieces into one workforce plan with owners and dates; your classroom's instructions decide the format and whether a budget is required. This example restates the problem and the target in a few sentences, then lists the actions in groups, each with its owner and date, so the plan can be followed as a work schedule. The budget section sets the plan's net cost against the cost of leaving the gap to travelers. A governance section explains how the plan will be reviewed and changed, and a risks section names what could derail it.
HLTH5663 Module 6 questions, answered
What does HLTH5663 Module 6 usually ask for?
HLTH5663 Module 6 usually asks students to consolidate their earlier work into one workforce plan, typically with actions, owners, timelines, a budget and measures. Many sections expect the plan to show how the pieces fit together. Your classroom's instructions decide the format and level of detail.
How should owners be assigned in a workforce plan?
Give each action one owner, named by position, even if several people contribute. A single owner makes it clear who answers for a missed date and avoids actions that belong to everyone and therefore to no one.
How do I justify a workforce plan's cost?
Compare the plan's net cost, after offsets such as reduced agency use and turnover, with the cost of doing nothing, such as filling the projected gap with agency staff. Show the year in which the plan becomes cheaper than the problem.
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