Background
Robert Fogel, Nobel economics laureate, predicted in the late 1990s that western economies would be ‘driven’ by health by 2020-2025 and that the health budget in these countries would consume about 20-25% of GDP. Consistent with this, US Medicaid released a report in March 2007 indicating that the USA would double health spending to 4.1 trillion dollars (US) by 2016 – and this is a country that currently spends 16% of GDP on health.
These economic trends will surely drive the health workforce agenda into the future. The health workforce currently represents nearly 9% of the total Australian workforce and has been growing at twice the level of other disciplines for at least the last 5 years.
Australia, like other nations, has recently recognised that workforce shortages across all health disciplines are a major reason for inability to deliver services in a timely and equitable manner, particularly in rural and remote areas. This is reflected internationally by the recent World Health Organisation’s Health Workforce Report predicting a shortfall of 4.25 million health workers just to maintain existing services over the next decade. Local concern about health workforce shortages is reflected by the recent doubling of medical school intake, approval for new pharmacy and dental programs and the fact that health programs are amongst the most popular in universities. Yet it is obvious that supply is still falling far short of demand.
In Australia, around one third of doctors are currently trained overseas. Given that the health workforce shortage is a global phenomenon, however, Australia cannot rely on other countries to supply an unending stream of health workers.
According to the Centre for Policy Development, issues that need addressing in Australian health workforce include;
- Immediate shortage in nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and dentists
- The inequity of distribution of health workers between metropolitan, rural and remote areas
- Health needs of aging population
- A lack of comprehensive, accurate and timely database of health workforce on which to base projections
- Lack of data on available clinical training capacity
- Opportunities for information technology to enable accurate and efficient care particularly in rural and remote communities.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that at least 2,360,000 health service providers and 1,890,000 management support workers, or a total of 4,250,000 health workers, are needed to fill the current gap in the international health workforce.