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The value of the HWF planning efficacy can be properly understood by figuring its absence, but the anticipation of the necessary amount of health professionals, thus matching “on time” population healthcare needs with the required health workforce, is both an ethical and economic goal.
Firstly, training the professionals that are really needed means saving money. Moreover, the fact that training is often publicly funded, means that to demonstrate future needs will help to endorse requests for investments in education and training.
Furthermore, recent history shows that due to the lack of planning, or wrong planning, several countries have had to resort to immigration in order to respond to severe professional shortages. That is the reason why the issue of the HWF shortage arrived on the agenda of governments and international institutions and why the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel was adopted.
So, planning is not puttting forward a perfectly calculated and trustable value of the future needs according the most economically favorable scenario, but building a dialogue between the stakeholders leading to several policy options and deriving from those a range of prognoses, together with a calculation of the potential error.
Finally, about the complexity of planning using so many parameters, we acknowledge that many data and various scenario building must take place for enabling policy maker to take decisions on the most plausible or the most desired options.
Download the document [PDF 244 KB] (Benefit of HWF Planning)