Objectives

The core goal of AHWI is to deliver Australia health workforce sustainability by 2020.

In order to meet this goal AHWI will:

• Ensure maintenance of health workforce data and statistics;
• Map future health systems;
• Develop innovative and flexible education models for the future health workforce; and
• Work with jurisdictions to develop and implement health workforce policy.

In the past, policy-making in the area of health workforce has tended to respond to the demands of the moment, rather than looking at ways that things could be done more efficiently. For example, the ratio of spending on hospitals and preventive medicine is currently 90:10. It may be questioned whether allocating increased resources to the prevention of disease and illness, resulting in a funding ratio of approximately 80:20, would be a more sustainable approach in the long-term. At the very least, issues like these need to be debated on the basis of extensive research and analysis.

The establishment of AHWI will endow health policy-makers with the resources they require more adequately to define and deliver Australia’s health workforce needs. Although one can never be sure that projections based on research will be 100% accurate, there is little doubt that policy-making informed by empirical analysis is more likely to be successful than that which offers only a short-term response to immediate difficulties.