Professionals in Nevada’s healthcare industry are optimistic about the quality of care and future of the industry. According to Forbes, Nevada ranks sixth in the U.S. for least expensive healthcare. The Kaiser Family Foundation ranks Nevada third in the U.S. for the lowest healthcare expenditure per capita.
The problem is, there simply isn’t enough healthcare—or healthcare professionals–-to go around.
“Nevada has outstanding healthcare,” said Chris Loftus, CEO, West Henderson Hospital Medical Center. “We just need more of it. Our population continues to grow very rapidly and our focus needs to be on getting more highly trained healthcare professionals in all of our roles, whether it’s physicians, nurses, therapists, we just need people to catch up. Our quality is high, we have good outcomes in the state and they’re continuing to improve.” He explained there’s simply a need for more physicians to care for patients and ensure access for all Nevadans.
Like much of the U.S., Nevada has faced a shortage of health professionals for decades. According to the Nevada Healthcare Legislative Guide 2025 (Nevada Hospital Association), 2.2 million Nevadans (64.9 percent of the population), live in federally designated primary medical care health professional shortage areas. Another 3.1 million (91.3 percent), live in federally designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas. Nevada, the state with the highest prevalence of mental illness, has the lowest rate of access to care.
Nevada has a shortage of physicians. “Depending on the data you look at, we are significantly down from where we need to be in terms of the number of providers,” said Loftus. “Based on providers per 100,000 population, the national average is around 240 physicians per 100,000 and we’re below that, somewhere around 190 physicians per 100,000. We rank pretty low. Out of 17 counties there are something like seven that have fewer than 10 total physicians. Even our most populous counties like Clark County, the ratio falls below the national average in a lot of specialties.”
Nevada ranks 48th in the country for primary care doctors, with close to 7,500 licensed physicians. A recent workforce report from University of Nevada, Reno estimates Nevada needs about 2,631 additional active physicians just to meet the national average.
“Also, the overall health workforce continues to age,” said Mitch Cloward, region president, Intermountain Health. That was a factor in 2010 when 24.5 percent of physicians in Nevada were age 60. A decade later that number is 32.2 percent. Cloward added, “We’ve also got a tremendous shortage of surgical and specialty care and concurrently our physicians who practice in those categories are also aging.”
While many professionals tout the quality of healthcare in the Silver State, others point to specific pockets that need focus and improvement. “We are horrible in Nevada rankings, in some cases 49th,” said Dean Pedro “Joe” Greer, founding dean for Roseman University College of Medicine. In Pahrump, for example, an ob/gyn high-risk pregnancy group just opened. Prior to that, women were driving to Las Vegas for all prenatal care. “If you’re talking about other states with their advances in medicine, they far exceed what’s going on in Nevada. We haven’t even started with liver or heart transplants here. We have corneal and renal, and we have to keep sending our patients out of state to get other transplants. [Those types of transplants are] considered almost routine medicine right now.”
Everything isn’t always what it seems, either. “It is not uncommon for various independent ranking bodies to place Nevada’s healthcare as a whole in the bottom half of the United States, such as a recent publication from U.S. News and World Report. However, these rankings typically compare the state as a whole, with different regions of Nevada faring better or worse than the national averages,” explained Derrick Glum, CEO, St. Mary’s Health Network. “Many of the hospitals throughout Nevada face similar struggles, such as access to care, recruitment of healthcare professionals and legislative issues that can significantly impact how healthcare is provided in the state.”
Triage for Nevada Healthcare
In order to meet the national per capita average of physician to patient population, Nevada needs significantly more doctors. The state is below the national per capita average in 33 of 39 physician specialties.
In addition, to meet the national average of professional to patient population, Nevada needs another 193 psychiatrists and 898 healthcare and mental health social workers. And, another 1,714 substance-abuse, behavioral-disorder and mental health counselors would bring the state up to the national average.
“We have now reached a critical point where collaboration between hospitals and academic partners is absolutely necessary,” said Dr. Wolfgang Gilliar, dean of the College of Osteopathic at Touro University Nevada.
Medical graduates who do residencies and fellowships in Nevada tend to stay in Nevada. Training programs are being developed both at a medical school level and residency graduate medical education level for residencies and fellowships. (Residencies are required to educate physicians in a particular specialty. Fellowships are not required and are a deeper study of a specialty.)
Nevada’s universities and colleges are working collaboratively with hospitals and healthcare systems. Enter Roseman University of Health Sciences, which first formed in Florida in 2009 and started a medical school from scratch in southern Nevada. Roseman recently achieved preliminary accreditation with the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) and has begun the process of recruiting its charter class of 60 medical students for its MD program.
Roseman has put together programs that actively teach medical students more than just medicine. Because the best physician isn’t the one with the best scores. “The best physician is the one who knows what they don’t know and has the personality as a clinician to take care of patients,” said Greer.
In addition to Roseman, Nevada has three other medical schools, all actively working to produce doctors to meet the state’s growing needs. At the northern end of the state, University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine is Nevada’s oldest medical school and was founded in 1969. The school admits a class of 70 first-year medical students each year. In southern Nevada, the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at University of Nevada, Las Vegas was founded in 2014 and accepts 66 new students each year.
Touro University Nevada, was founded in 2004 with an inaugural class of 78 students. The school graduated 157 students from its College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2024, all of whom secured a residency. “The mission of the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Touro University Nevada [is] to grow the physicians for the state of Nevada,” said Gilliar. “We started 20 years ago, and the medical school was built especially for this reason. Since we have adhered to this mission, we have graduated more than 3,000 osteopathic physicians and we want to have at least 50 percent of our graduates stay and remain in this state. Our goal is to have 1,000 graduates of Touro Nevada medical school remain in the state, to practice in the state, for the next 10 years.
Navigating the Costs
The cost of one year of medical residency is approximately $195,000 per resident, with most running three to five years. The good news is physicians who do their residencies in Nevada usually stay in Nevada.
The not-so-good news is there aren’t enough graduate medical education (GME) slots open and, in 1996, Congress capped the number of available GME slots because Medicare is the primary funding source.
“That means Nevada’s largest hospitals can’t grow their programs to meet the demand for these new physicians and they’re having few exceptions ever since that cap was put in place, and some of them have grown, but we need a lot more,” said Loftus. Recently Medicare added 1,000 new funded GME slots over a 5-year period, but that’s only 200 new doctors, nationwide. There’s currently a bill in the Nevada Legislature designed to get funding to create more GME spots in Nevada.
For new doctors coming out of residency and entering practice, medical school debt is an average of nearly $235,000. Part of attracting those new doctors is having good public schools for their kids, because with medical school debt they can’t afford private schools, and they want their kids educated as well as they were.
Going into practice is no longer about hanging out a shingle. Corporate medical groups are hiring doctors. Which can be an advantage. “Because if you can get the health systems here to start doing that, you can do this somewhat like the military,” said Greer. “If you come and work in our hospital system after you finish your training, work for us for a minimum of four or five years, we’ll pay off your medical school loans. And if you work somewhere four or five years, you’ve established a patient population—you’re staying.”
New and Improved
Nevada is competing for the same resources as every other state. The physician shortage is nationwide. So, there’s a major thrust behind using technology to address the shortage.
“It’s not a silver bullet to change the trajectory,” said Cloward. “But telehealth capabilities allow physicians to remotely monitor or have a visit with a patient remotely who is in a rural area with the physician perhaps in an urban area.” A variety of technologies like ambient listening allow clinicians to document visits more quickly than before. “Clearly artificial intelligence advancement will help us more accurately document what’s happening in real time with our patients.”
Keeping up to date on advanced medical technology and programs enhances healthcare delivery. “St. Mary’s Health Network has consistently sought out new programs and procedures,” said Glum. Programs implemented include one to treat carotid artery disease and help prevent strokes. Another improved access to industry-leading treatment interventions used in treating atrial fibrillation, the most commonly diagnosed arrhythmia in clinical practice.
Forty-one states and two U.S. territories have enacted the NLC—Nurse Licensure Compact. During the pandemic, Governor Sisolak passed an emergency directive that allowed a licensing waiver for nurses, and it worked. The compact means licensed nurses can cross state lines to work with patients without filing paperwork in that state, paying a fee, and waiting for that state’s license. And for nurses who are military spouses and move frequently, it allows them to work in the states where they settle. The nursing shortage is nationwide. NLC offers solutions in every state and U.S. territory, not just Nevada. Just to meet the national average, Nevada would need to add 3,162 registered nurses, nearly 3,300 licensed practical nurses and 5,055 nursing assistants.
Access to care includes the facilities themselves. Healthcare systems are expanding their capabilities throughout Nevada. Valley Health System, which West Henderson Hospital is part of, lists 27 facilities in Las Vegas. Valley Health System is owned by Universal Health Services (UHS). In Reno, Northern Nevada Health System is owned by UHS and has seven facilities.
For pediatrics, children with complex healthcare issues have routinely had to leave the state for care because there hasn’t been a dedicated children’s hospital, and many of the medical and surgical pediatricians simply aren’t in Nevada. Intermountain Health is moving forward in 2025 with plans for a standalone children’s hospital in Las Vegas, expected to open in 2030.
Medicare and Medicaid
There is a lot of uncertainty around proposed federal cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
“Conversations taking place right now with respect to Medicaid are scary. We’re not hearing about cuts in Medicare, but we are hearing about potential cuts in Medicaid at the federal level. It’s scary because it could be sweeping and catastrophic,” said Patrick Kelly, CEO, Nevada Hospital Association. “We just don’t know the size of it. There are so many discussions about different things. For example, with Medicaid, we have an expanding population, and it’s funded at 90 percent, and it could go down as low as 50 percent. That’s a dramatic change and would impact the state budget considerably. The state could simply say we can’t make up that difference, and then people would become uninsured.”
NHA recently started a Medicare provider program which allows hospitals and physicians to become eligible to be paid through the Medicare program for Medicare patients. Cuts to Medicare provider programs would have significant impact on hospitals.
“According to the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2023, 10 percent of Nevada’s population was uninsured,” said Cloward. That translates to 335,100 people, higher than the national average of 8 percent, and one of the highest uninsured rates in the U.S. “Some of the factors that contribute to uninsured status include income – lower-income individuals are more likely to be uninsured. Education actually contributes; individuals with high school diplomas or less are more likely to be uninsured. Ethnicity can have an impact. Location – Clark County has a large number of uninsured people, but obviously there are rural counties that have high rates as well. Cost – the cost of insurance even with subsidies can be a barrier to care. Healthcare can be expensive.”
In 2021, 48.8 percent of Nevadans were insured through their workplace; 16.8 percent through Medicare for seniors and about 16.7 percent through the military.
Does being uninsured or under-insured make it harder for healthcare entities to treat patients? Yes. The costs have to be absorbed somehow. Intermountain’s not-for-profit mission means they treat patients regardless of ability to pay. “But if you asked me does it make it harder for uninsured patients to receive that care?” Cloward asked. “Absolutely.”
“One thousand percent yes,” agreed Loftus. “The latest statistics I saw, about 11 percent of Nevadans are uninsured and a lot of the conversation right now on potential Medicaid cuts is potentially catastrophic for the healthcare industry. We have 20 percent of Nevada population as Medicaid beneficiaries and about 31 percent of acute hospital inpatients are Medicaid patients.
If we see that cut with Medicaid, we’ll continue to have more patients who are uninsured. That just creates a massive, significant financial barrier for people who are seeking care.”
That barrier increases the overall cost of care statewide. For the uninsured, it can make it difficult to access primary care and preventative services. As a result, patients can wind up much sicker, and necessary care becomes that much more expensive. Breaking down Nevada numbers, currently Nevada hospitals have 31 percent Medicaid patients and 11 percent uninsured; 78.5 percent pay less than their actual cost of care as of 2023, and hospital Medicaid base rates have only increased by 5 percent in the last 22 years, while hospital costs have increased 71 percent.
“It’s scary,” said Loftus. “These Medicaid cuts are alarming, and we’ve had a lot of conversations about that with our teams and with representatives. We’re hoping to help prevent any drastic cuts because it really has a downstream effect on the patients and [the potential] to really hurt the whole healthcare system.”
“The statistics on the Kaiser Family Foundation website states we are one of the lowest levels of providing Medicaid expenditure per person, which I think has a little to do with the difficulty of accessing it,” said Kelly. “The national average spend per Medicaid enrollee is $7,593 per year, and Nevada spends $5,267 per year. That’s among the lowest in the nation.”
The Economic Impact of Healthcare
Nevada’s healthcare industry employs 35,600 people and creates $6 billion in economic impact to local communities. Approximately $667 million has been invested into capital improvements. The economic impact goes beyond that. Sick workers aren’t as productive as they could be or may not make it to work at all. Keeping the workforce healthy is keeping the workforce working.
Intermountain Health’s children’s hospital is expected to create a $274 million economic boost during the anticipated five years of construction, and about $840 million in economic output once it opens.
“While I am optimistic that healthcare in Nevada can undergo a prominent evolution towards greater access, better quality and cost-efficient approaches, it is my feeling it will take a good five to ten years to reach a new height where we feel we have actually implemented sufficiently new and innovative activities,” said Gilliar.
“The healthcare industry is a vital component of Nevada’s economy, providing employment opportunities, supporting local businesses, and contributing to the overall wellbeing of communities,” said Glum. “Investments in healthcare infrastructure and services not only improve public health but also drive economic growth by attracting businesses and residents seeking quality healthcare options.”
