Health workforce planning is a critical part of the short, medium and long term planning for the delivery of health services. The objective of this planning is that “Health Workforce Planning aims to achieve a proper balance between the supply and demand for different categories of health workers, in both the short and longer term”. (OECD 2013) The complexity of the workforce planning activities undertaken by health organisations, systems and healthcare systems should be proportional to the size, complexity and outcomes associated with the workforce under review or management.
Fundamentally health workforce planning can be seen across two major planning streams or areas of review: the first is about estimating supply and demand for health workforce staff; and the second takes a system side view and involves scenario, context or prognostic reviews. Supply and demand works with information and assumptions and scenario planning looks at “What if?” questions of changes in political, economic, social and technological drivers of demand.

In this iBrief task consider that you have just joined the workforce planning team within a large healthcare delivery organisation (20,000+ staff members). Your team’s manager has asked you to prepare a brief focusing on the contemporary methods of supply and demand approach to health workforce planning. Your new team knows that there are several methods available to supply and demand planning but they are interested in you undertaking a national and international scan to prepare a brief that informs about contemporary supply and demand planning approaches used in health workforces.