Workload Indicators of Staffing Need
User's manual
Overview
Health service managers around the world are faced with increasing challenges. Resources
to respond to their populations’ demand for services are often inadequate. The distribution of
human resources is generally poorly balanced between urban and rural areas and between
primary, secondary and tertiary levels of care. Disease-oriented programme interventions,
such as those contained in the Millennium Development Goals, differ from the reinvigorated
primary care approach. In contrast with the more narrow focus on diseases, the primary care
approach calls for a higher degree of integration of services, better governance structures
and improved partner coordination.
This takes place in an increasingly complex world of
partners, which is also generating new challenges for managers.
Concerns about balancing the workforce within and between service institutions rank high in
seeking how best to respond to challenges, such as the ones above. Human resources – the
health workers who actually deliver health services – are the most costly and least readily
available resource in a health system. They are also indispensable. Managers at national and
local levels struggle daily with how to manage this costly but essential resource efficiently so
that they can achieve a more just distribution of workload and better productivity.