Workforce economics by design

Workforce planning in healthcare is more than a numbers game – it’s about maximising the return on investment. Supporting the workforce is vital to meet demand and improve population health.

During the pandemic, it became evident that societal value depends on a healthy population. A high-performing and diverse health professional workforce drives a healthy population.

What drives the ‘market’ for Health and Care Professionals?

At its simplest, the scale of demand for the health workforce and the relative mix of skills, experience, and expertise is driven by underlying population health, treatment and care needs, models of health and care, and health and care system design and funding.

The scale and diversity of supply of the health and care workforce are driven by education and training, the financial and non-financial rewards from employment, and how these compare with other career choices.

Of course, it isn’t as simple as that.

• There are over 350 different health and care professional careers. Each of these will have different drivers of demand and supply.
• Health and care professionals don’t work in isolation; they combine into multi-professional, multi-disciplinary teams across care settings, care pathways, and geographical networks and utilise medicines, devices, other technologies, and physical infrastructure to deliver services. Context matters when measuring value.
• Depending on the role, it can take many years of training to reach career goals. Training is expensive both for the individual and the employer. The PSSRU estimate the cost of training an NHS consultant to be more than £500,000, with graduate and post-graduate training taking around 12-13 years minimum. To add to the complexity, there is a labyrinth of funding streams to support trainees and employers with these costs, which are inconsistent across professions.
• In the NHS, pay levels are generally set nationally. Given the chronic levels of vacancies in some disciplines and service areas and the relatively high use of agency or locum staff for key professional groups, these are likely to fall short of the genuine market price for this resource.
• Globally, there is a chronic shortage of health professionals – forecasts suggest a shortage of 18m by 2030, mainly in low to middle-income countries. Developed countries have a role in helping to address this shortage and not simply relying on overseas staff to plug gaps in local supply

What drives the Value of Health and Care Professionals?

For an Integrated Care System (ICS) to get maximum value from investment, considerations about how best to leverage the value of the health and care workforce must be very high on the agenda. Workforce planning isn’t just about getting the numbers right but also about health economics. Maximising return on investment from the development and support of the workforce is vital.

There are many strategies that employers within the ICS can invest in:

• Increase Supply – e.g., retention strategies that encourage a return to practice.
• Develop Skills – e.g. higher and post-graduate training.
• Deploy New Ways of Working – e.g. multi-professional teams
• Utilise New Roles – e.g. through advancing practice.
• Improve Leadership – e.g. impacting organisation design, culture, rewards and incentives, staff morale, and working experiences.

All these strategies involve investment in resources, such as time and technology. All can be measured in terms of the short- and long-term economic value they add to the health (and care) system and wider society. All require investment funding, some of which will need coordination or support by the ICS rather than individual provider organisations. This needs to be integral to the workforce development programme.

Let’s start incorporating health economics into workforce planning and demonstrate the return on investment from the development and support of the workforce for the benefit of staff, patients and the health and care system

Want to learn more about Strategic Workforce Planning?

Join us on 27th February, from 3 pm to 5 pm, when we will host a FREE webinar titled “Accelerating System Productivity and Efficiency through Strategic Workforce Planning.” During this session, we will share our perspectives on Strategic Workforce Planning and how organisations and ecosystems can develop a business-driven integrated plan. This plan, founded on robust economic analysis, ensures strategic positioning for sustained success.

To register for this FREE webinar, please email office@tricordant.com. Feel free to extend this invitation to colleagues interested in this topic.