How can New Zealand’s health sector embrace the complexity around workforce shortage and rebuild the workforce pipeline?

A healthcare investment is the smart investment. The health workforce is a national resource; a resource that is valuable to the community in terms of the benefit derived by the community from a well-trained health workforce.

In December 2019 there were 246,500 people employed in the health care and social assistance sector. Another 33,400 were employed in social assistance services. The health care and social assistance sector is the largest industry employer in the country and represents 11% of all those employed across New Zealand.

When assessed as a proportion of the total New Zealand population, the health care and social assistance workforce has increased from 4,035 per 100,000 in 2000 to 6,371 per 100,000 in 2019.

In recent years there has been a shift in thinking and an understanding that the health sector has an economy, it makes an economic footprint and it has a labour market dynamic of its own. Evidence suggests that investments in the health workforce and broader health sector can promote inclusive economic growth, and that health and inclusive economic growth are complementary and not necessarily opposing goals.

Health institutions are often viewed as ‘anchor institutions’, a term used to describe the fact that in tough economic times they are economically and socially connected to the communities in which they are based, and so act as economic stabilisers. Employment in the health and disability sector tends to be less sensitive to cyclical fluctuations (such as economic recessions) than other sectors of the economy. The health sector can create jobs in deprived areas and regions and keep the productive sector from going through an economic downturn.

There are three key factors that underpin the importance of national workforce planning for health workforce. First, there is an immediate need to deal with the significant demand that has occurred over the last ten years. Second, due to the age demographic of the medical workforce, a huge number of the workforce will retire from 2025. Third, is the lack of coordination across the health workforce pipeline, between governments, universities, and the various private employers.

Our EDs regularly operate at well over 120% capacity and being desperately overstretched is unfortunately now the norm not the exception. Lack of adequate staffing means extremely limited or no ICU capacity in some regions.

One estimate calculated that per capita, to match Australia, New Zealand needs approximately 1500 more hospital specialists (private and public), 1400 GPs and 12,000 nurses. An undeclared health workforce emergency is here today. There is an absolute requirement to trigger official action on staff retention and recruitment and ensure it is prioritised at central government and regional hospital and community levels.