FIVE KEY ELEMENTS OF A PLANNING SYSTEM

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“Ensuring the right people, with the right skills, in the right places, at the right time”. This definition provided by Stephen Taylor (People Resourcing, 1998) is one of the most comprehensive and effective, as it encompasses all the objects of a HWF planning system and, at the same time, provides an intuitive idea of its complexity.

To better manage and deal with this complexity, we proposed a stepwise approach starting with two minimum HWF planning purposes:

1. to recognise the major imbalances of HWF;
2. to analyse those imbalances.

In practical terms, this means to estimate the supply of health professionals, to estimate future demands, to match the demand, to prevent the foreseen deficit or surpluses, and finally to prepare plans to face or prevent the foreseen deficits or surpluses.

In order to achieve the two minimum purposes, as well as to ensure the success of those planning activities, it is necessary to work on five elements that we can consider as the building blocks a HWF planning system:

1. GOALS:
2. FORECASTING MODEL;
3. DATA SOURCES;
4. LINK TO POLICY ACTIONS;
5. ORGANIZATION.

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