Lawmakers and staff on the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee saw a first public demonstration of a state healthcare workforce dashboard developed at New Mexico Tech’s Institute for Complex Additive Systems Analysis. The presentation, led by Mary Pinnell, said the dashboard was created with a 2024 legislative appropriation to help state leaders track where physicians and nurses practice, whether they remain in New Mexico and how supply compares with modeled demand.

Committee members were shown maps, Sankey retention diagrams and county-level full‑time‑equivalent (FTE) tallies intended to support workforce policy decisions. Pinnell said the tool focuses initially on physicians, nurses and emergency medical technicians and examines retention, FTE versus part‑time counts and a proprietary supply‑and‑demand projection for 3‑, 5‑ and 10‑year horizons.

The project team and stakeholders selected three primary data families for the first version: retention, FTE/PT status and supply‑and‑demand projections. Pinnell told the committee the dashboard currently uses three data sources: a purchased dataset from a firm identified in the presentation as 3dHealth, the federal National Provider Identifier (NPI) registry and a Board of Nursing dataset. The presenters said the 3dHealth dataset was bought because stakeholders recommended it and because it contains a demand algorithm the state team could not access or reproduce. Pinnell described the 3dHealth purchase as a one‑time, large line‑item procurement and told the committee the vendor provided data beginning in 2025 and did not supply earlier years.

The team emphasized limits. Pinnell said NPI records treat many nonclinical roles (ambulance drivers, vehicle technicians) the same as clinicians, which can inflate counts; the dashboard therefore filters specialties when presenting retention. She also said the dashboard lacks state EMS data and that the Department of Health is currently the only agency that holds that EMS feed. “We still do not have data from Department of Health with EMS,” Pinnell said, noting EMT analytics will be added when that data is available. The presenters described plans to post the dashboard to a public website by September and said updates vary by source—NPI can be refreshed quarterly, but most feeds are not real time.

Committee members pressed on cost, refresh cadence and data provenance. Pinnell told the committee the purchased workforce dataset cost roughly $60,000 up front and that recurring access was quoted around $20,000 per year; she and others argued that building a state‑powered feed would reduce ongoing vendor costs but requires agencies to share machine‑to‑machine data. Several legislators urged the Legislature to fund and to consider statutory options to require data sharing; Representative Block said the dashboard is “exactly the type of information we need as policymakers” and offered to pursue funding. Secretary Jose Acosta of the Department of Health told the committee he would follow up on the EMS request after the meeting.

The presenters repeatedly framed the current dashboard as a first release constrained by available data: Pinnell said the group’s long‑term aim is “to have this dashboard powered by New Mexico data” rather than proprietary national feeds. They also said the dashboard is built with open‑source libraries and therefore would not incur recurring subscription licensing costs once state data feeds are in place.

The committee’s questions and the presenters’ responses highlighted two policy choices for lawmakers: sustain vendor purchases while procurement and data‑sharing arrangements are negotiated, or fund state systems and data‑sharing infrastructure now to lower recurring vendor costs and permit more granular, historical analyses. Several committee members urged the project team to return with a public release and with a clearer timeline for specific feeds, including EMS and tribal/IHS data.

The dashboard demonstration and the Q&A are intended as a tool for future budget and statutory decisions; no formal committee action was taken at this meeting.