Strategic health workforce planning

Abstract

Analysts predict impending shortages in the health care workforce, yet wages for health care workers already account for over half of U.S. health expenditures. It is thus increasingly important to adequately plan to meet health workforce demand at reasonable cost. Using infinite linear programming methodology, we propose an infinite-horizon model for health workforce planning in a large health system for a single worker class; e.g., nurses. We give a series of common-sense conditions that any system of this kind should satisfy and use them to prove the optimality of a natural lookahead policy. We then use real-world data to examine how such policies perform in more complex systems; in particular, our experiments show that a natural extension of the lookahead policy performs well when incorporating stochastic demand growth.

From problem structuring to optimization: A multi-methodological framework to assist the planning of medical training

“…Also, it is typically the case that residency programs have limited vacancies and that the training system entails specific requirements. Despite these differences, when one looks into health workforce literature, one observes that most studies have been focusing on nurses (Hu et al, 2016;Lavieri & Puterman, 2009;Li et al, 2007;Schell et al, 2016;Schell et al, 2015), with only one study targeting the planning of physicians (Senese et al, 2015).…”

“…What is commonly found are mathematical programming models that play a key role when the aim is to support the strategic planning of the workforce (Ernst et al, 2004). Still, a small body of literature employing these methods exists in the area of health care workforce planning and training (Hu et al, 2016;Lavieri & Puterman, 2009;Schell et al, 2016;Schell et al, 2015;Senese et al, 2015), with existing studies mainly featuring mono-objective mathematical programming models focused on the minimization of costs. Therefore, these models typically fail to account for the multiplicity of objectives that mirror the concerns of the different stakeholders.…”

Planning Health Workforce Training in the Detection and Prevention of Excessive Alcohol Consumption: An Optimization-Based Approach

“…The authors argue that linear programming models represent the most adequate approach due to its transparency, because it is easy to obtain the optimal solution and also because it is easy to modify and realize a scenario analysis. Hu et al (2016) have also proposed a mathematical programming model to plan the training, promotion and hiring process of nurses, while aiming at minimizing total costs. An additional model was developed by Senese et al (2015), who developed a linear programming model to support the optimal assignment of medical specialization grants for physicians, while minimizing the gap between supply and demand of physicians.…”

Determining personnel promotion policies in HEI

“…For instance, [32] present a methodology for dealing with the strategic staff planning in a hospital, considering different units, but without taking into account a set of categories per each unit. [14] present a methodology for nurse planning considering the cost as the main optimization criteria, however this research does not include the heterogeneity of the medic staff and others optimization criterion, like the service level.…”

“…Equations (12) and (13) express the relation between the composition of the workforce, the preferable composition, and the discrepancy variables; then, Equation (14) calculates the maximum discrepancy, for each period and within all categories, to avoid, as much as possible, that the discrepancy is concentrated in few categories (assuming that it is preferable a regular distribution of the discrepancy).…”