Utah's healthcare workforce is already stretched thin, and the state's population is about to double the pressure. With fewer than one nurse for every 140 residents and nearly zero slack in the labor market, the pipeline of new nurses has to expand now to meet demand that won't peak for decades.

The state ranks 49th out of 50 for nurses per capita, with roughly 7 registered nurses per 1,000 residents, according to the Covista Care Capacity Monitor, a 2026 survey fielded by Gallup. In the Salt Lake City metro area, healthcare employers posted 24,231 open positions per month in 2026 at a healthcare unemployment rate of just 0.70%, leaving 5.2 open jobs for every available worker. Vacancies grew 19.3% year over year.

Statewide, the picture is sharper: 51,158 monthly healthcare vacancies, up 33.4% from the prior year.

One concrete response is taking shape minutes from Draper. Chamberlain University, which operates the largest BSN nursing program in the country, is opening a campus at 9490 South 300 West in Sandy, about a mile north of The Shops at South Town. The campus begins its first on-site session Oct. 26, and applications are being accepted, according to Chamberlain's program page. The CCNE-accredited program requires no prerequisites for admission. The Salt Lake Tribune reported on the opening July 21, describing Chamberlain as a private, for-profit institution hoping to help with the state's critical nursing shortage.

Sandy borders Draper along the Salt Lake County corridor, and the campus sits off Interstate 15 at Exit 295. For Draper-area residents considering a nursing career, it's the closest new training capacity being added.

Why the timeline matters

The Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute projects Utah's population will grow from 3.6 million to 5.6 million by 2065. The share of residents 65 and older will nearly double, rising from one in eight to nearly one in four. Health care and social assistance is projected to lead all industries in job growth, adding 158,000 positions statewide over that span.

That aging wave is the core problem. A younger population needs fewer nurses per capita. But as Utah's median age climbs from 32.8 to a projected 45.3 by 2065, demand for nursing care will surge, and roughly one-quarter of the state's current registered nurses are already 55 or older.

"We have to start educating for that now, because if we don't stay ahead of that, then we will be back into a deficit," University of Utah College of Nursing dean Marla De Jong told the Deseret News in March.

De Jong noted that Utah's sharpest shortages are concentrated in rural communities and long-term care settings. In those settings, registered nurses earn an average of $44,000 annually, compared to $74,000 in acute care, according to the Utah Health Workforce Information Center. Pipeline expansion alone won't solve the problem without enough clinical placement sites and strategies to retain new graduates, De Jong said.

Local capacity on the horizon

The workforce question is also tied to Draper's largest development project. University of Utah Health signed a purchase agreement June 25 for 45.8 acres at The Point, the innovation community rising on the former state prison site. When fully operational, U of U Health expects to employ approximately 2,500 clinical and non-clinical staff at that campus, serving residents across Draper, Sandy, Lehi, South Jordan and surrounding cities.

"This land purchase is an exciting milestone because it gives us the foundational footprint to bring comprehensive, nationally ranked care closer to people where they already live and work," U of U Health CEO Bob Carter said in the June 25 announcement.

Those 2,500 positions will need to be filled from somewhere. With the number of new RN graduates in Utah declining, according to Lightcast data cited by the Deseret News, the gap between local demand and local supply is widening.

Chamberlain's Sandy campus and the eventual Point health facility represent two sides of the same equation: training capacity and employment demand, both landing within a few miles of each other along the I-15 corridor. Whether the pipeline grows fast enough to match remains an open question.