Projection Of Australian Health Care Expenditure

Rationale

Discuss About The Projection Australian Health Care Expenditure.

According to Anand & Barnighausen (2014), shortage of human resource in the health sector dramatically influences the lives of the citizen who dearly depend on their gifted services. Lack of professional health personnel such as nurses poses a great barrier to the realization of the Millennium Development Goals aimed at scaling high the wellbeing of citizens.

Hernandez, Dräger, Evans, Tan-Torres, Edejer & Dal Poz (2015), concludes that nurses play a critical role in national and global health systems. Their shortage results in the ineffectiveness of health care system, notably in remote communities where health practitioners are scarce (WHO 2006: ICN 2004). Nurses’ shortages are reported in Australia among other countries including Canada. With regards to WHO nurses comprise 40-50% of the global health providers and in Australia nurses range up to 55% of the total health providers. It is, therefore, essential to understanding the distribution of nurses to plan on their retention methods and their retirement trends.

Australian Health Workforce was initiated by the Council of Australian Government National Partnership through its 2008 collaborative partnership related to Hospitals and Health workforce reforms. This initiative was viewed to address the challenges of availing qualified, innovative and mobile health workers professionals in Australia. Following the departmental head conference, the Australia Health Worker was allowed to undertake a workforce planning of all health practitioners; doctors, nurses, and midwives for a period stretching up to 2025 to create a database that will be used to address current and future issues relating to workforce requirements. (Health Workforce Australia, 2014).

Workforce planning is ideal in the provision of efficient and effective services in the health sector, planning help to save the government and other areas the burden of unseen human resource shortages, duplication, and allocation of other resources such as capital in line with priority needs. With workforce planning the government can address its current and projected future challenges such as self –sufficiency. As result of the aging population, the energetic workforce is reducing at an alarming rate thus the inability to cope with the ever-changing diseases patterns such as the prevalence of diabetes.

The efforts invested in predicting future workforce and skills enhancement requirements is tedious and tricky as the industry keeps on evolving and new jobs come into play while others become extinct. Australia, environmental scan is produced on an annual basis with the aim of gathering data on industrial intelligence and skills requirement to profile for the current and future status of the industrial workforce. This venture tries to unfold the macro and micro factors that impact on the skills requirements of the workforce. According to 2015 environmental scan, the aging workforce and the forecasted retirements are critical factors affecting the Austria government and community safety sector currently and shortly. Because of pressure and high demand of health workforce, organizations have developed methods that rely on Human Resources to increase the scope of duties on nurses to realize higher efficiency.  As a result, this call for adequate training to enable nurses and other professional perform additional functions.  On the side of legislation and regulation, the government policies impact on businesses and safety sectors to a greater extent. Policies relating to cutting red tape and restructuring the public sector are impacting on enterprises ability to advance and manage their workforce.

Environmental Scan

GSA research established that training is a priority for government and community safety sectors. Management and leadership skills are a significant focus for institutions. It furthers that teamwork and communication skills should be treated as a priority when dealing with a customer-centric environment, Australian Hospital Statistics (2009–10). Additionally, emerging abilities should also be included to help the health workforce cope with the ever-changing and innovative market demands. In the prison department there is also an increased demand for officers, the Australian Bureau of Statistics data indicates that the number of prisoners detained in full-time custody is 33,930 and 56, 069 in community-based correctional centers as for September 2014. However, from November 2009 to November 2013 the prison department has experienced considerable growth. In the public safety, the fire sector comprises rural, land management and aviation-based services. In 2012 there were 18,208 paid personnel and 222,344 volunteer firefighters. On the other hand, the defense department in the year 2013-14 had 56,922 ADF personnel across the Navy which had 13,921, army 29,010 and air force had 13,991 workforces. With the above comparison, it is notable that the health department requires more workforces due to the increasing and emerging new forms of diseases. It is clear also that there is an imbalance in the distribution of workforce in Austria.

Findings from policy and planning documents indicate that nursing is considered a female profession and its members have varied roles in the society. Results on the demographic profile of nursing students’, shows that most of the students fall in the age bracket of 17-68 years. Some institutions had records of students enrolled who are aged 50 years and other with 60years or more. This factor dramatically influences the contribution to the workforce requirement on graduation (Anand and Barnighausen, 2014). The age brackets of the enrolled students imply the future workforce planning methodologies for at least 42% of the workforces in the market are of age 45 years and above. Other findings indicate that most of the students prefer working on part-time after their graduation, this has affected the work pattern resulting in the shift from full time to part-time status.

The distribution of nurses in Australia is relatively even from a national point of view, though there are variations at states, territories and other remote areas. The state of Victoria has a considerably high number of nurses compared to other remotes areas, while in South Australia the ratio of nurses to the population is uneven as there are more nurses compared to the community. Among all regions in Australia, Tasmania has the highest number of some nurses at large.

Findings from Policy and other Planning Documents

The number of nurses in Western Australia is considerably below the required national average. On the other hand, New South Wales has a reduced number of nurses when compared to its population. According to the 2006 census, the proportionality of nurses is attributed to the increase in a number of the residents. Other regions have the same issues include, Bunbury and Mandurah.

The Nursing and Midwifery Labor force (2005), concludes that nurses form the largest proportion of the health professionals working in the remote areas and the high turnover rate of skilled nurses, results in shortages.

Table 1: Employed Registered Nurses and Enrolled Nurses, age profile, 2009 and 2012

Type of Nurse	Average age	Percentage age	Average age	Percentage age
Registered nurses	44.2	19.9	44.3	22.5
Enrolled Nurses	44.9	19,3	46	25.9
All Nurses	44.3	19.3	44.6	23.1

Table 2: Data from the 2006 Census showing the population of nurses by state/territory and remoteness

	Major Cities	Inner Regional	Outer Regional	Remote	Very Remote
National	1,137	1200	1000	1090	1400
SA	1,400	750	1250	1460	1600
WA	1,164	773	1,153	1,086	1,139
NSW	1,016	1,157	952	1,122	1080

Table 3: Average weekly hours, employed registered nurses and enrolled nurses, 2009 and 2012

Type of Nurses	Male	Female	Persons	Male	Female	Persons
Registered Nurses	38.8	33	33.6	37.6	31	31.7
	34.1	30.5	30.8	34.5	30.9	31.2
	37.3	32	32.6	37.1	31	31.6

From the above tables, table one indicates that between 2009 and 2012 there was a considerable increase in the age among the health workers. Table two shows that the number of nurses deployed to work in remote areas is relatively high when compared to those working in cities and regional centers. On working hours as presented in table three, male nurses work for long hours when compared to female nurses. This factor could be attributed to family responsibility and female related engagement.

From the findings, it’s evident that planning is necessary to help curb the challenges revolving around the health workforce and medical profession. More strategies are needed to ensure that the proposed solutions are implemented both at academic and professional levels for example, developing database on demographic profile of students enrolled in medical programs at the university and college level, to aid in current and future planning.

According to the Australian Medical Workforce Advisory Committee (2014), In order to maintain a constant supply of nurses in the workforce, the number of undergraduate nursing student should be in line with the demand (Ogle et al., 2015). Therefore, key stakeholders should be aware of the demographic profile of nursing students and the rate of enrolment in order to develop effective workforce plans. Creating demographic database of the required future nursing workforce avails an evidence base retention criterion and a mechanism for tracking trends in changing career plans may impact the workforce planning.

There is also insufficient data gathered by state authorities and nursing organizations required to determine actual figures of students enrolled in undergraduate programs. Away from the routine educational evaluation, it is important to develop data systems at college levels, the Council of Deans of Medicine in Australia (CDAMS) recognized the need, and as a result, he established a medical outcome project. The database aims to develop a minimum data of enrolled medical students in Australian universities to assess the demographic trends which are essential in informing workforce planning.

Geographical Distribution of Nursing Workforce in Australia

Innovation and reforms are essential to sustainable, efficiency and affordable -workforce. Health workers Plan for 2025 asserts that a productivity-enhancing improvement to health workforce is of the essence to ensure a sustainable health care system.

From the nursing workforce report of 2014, the following recommendations were made as an attempt to solve the current status of nurses and other health workers in Australia. Firstly, there is need to foster investment in education and media campaigns to create awareness on the importance of the nursing profession. Secondly, there was a need to expose young people to the variety of nursing programs so that they can comfortably choose from- hospital-based, school-based, industry-based and public. Thirdly, there was a need to champion for a simplified procedure while obtaining licenses and a need to increase recognition for the advanced health practices and lastly, there was a need for government to explore the part-time working option for women who wish to work and take care of their families.

Conclusion

With the ever-increasing challenges in the health sectors in Australia, there is a need for workforce planning to meet and address the challenges above both at present and in future. Workforce projections avails tool necessary for planning, this is done through highlighting zones of workforce imbalance which calls for government intervention and other reforms. Currently, health workforce forecasts are generated at both national and state levels, initially; projections were made using different datasets, traditions, and techniques, which were not sufficient in forecasting future health workforce requirements. Through HW 2025, HWA is putting in place relevant mechanisms which are consistent and coherent with health workforce projections that can be applied to workforce planning.

References

Anand and Barnighausen, (2014). Is health workforce sustainability in Australia and New Zealand a realistic policy goal? Aust Health Rev.; 35:152–155. [PubMed]

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Australian Hospital Statistics 2009–10. Health services series no. 40. Cat. No. HSE 107. Canberra: AIHW; 2016.

Australian Medical Workforce Advisory Committee. Medical workforce planning in Australia. Aust Health Rev. 2010; 23:8–26

Goss J. (2008).  Projection of Australian Health Care Expenditure by Disease, 2003–2033. Cat. No. HWF 36. Canberra: AIHW.

Health Workforce Australia (2014). Australia’s Future Health Workforce – Nurses Overview Report. Commonwealth of Australia.

Health Workforce Australia (HWA) (2012). HW2025 Doctors, Nurses, and Midwives (called HW2025).

Health Workforce Australia. Health Workforce 2025 – Doctors. Australia: Nurses and Midwives – Volume 2. Adelaide: HWA; 2012.

Health Workforce Australia. Health Workforce 2025. Australia: Medical Specialties – Volume 3. Adelaide: HWA; 2012.

Hernandez P, Dräger S, Evans DB, Tan-Torres Edejer T, Dal Poz MR. (2015). Measuring Expenditure for the Health Workforce: Evidence and Challenges. Geneva: WHO.

Ogle et al. (2015). Issues are facing future health care workforce: the importance of demand modeling. Aust New Zeal Health Pol. 2009; 67: 12. doi: 10.1186/1743-8462-6-12. [PMC free article] [PubMed][Cross Ref]

Productivity Commission, (2015). Australia’s Health Workforce Research Report. Canberra: Productivity Commission. Retrieved from: Health Workforce Australia. Health Workforce. Australia: Doctors, Nurses, and Midwives – Volume 1. Adelaide: HWA; 2012.