How many anesthesia professionals will be providing patient care in 20 years? How many people will need procedures requiring anesthesia by that time? These may seem like questions best reserved for a crystal ball, but they are questions commonly asked among economists and health policy leaders. Health workforce projections have been conducted for decades and relied upon by researchers and policymakers despite mixed results. In his 1969 publication, Herbert E. Klarman discussed the approaches employed by economists to predict health workforce supply and demand.1 He correctly stated that “future requirements are based, implicitly or explicitly, on certain assumptions or beliefs concerning the present or recent past.” Because researchers cannot predict the future, they must use assumptions to predict future health workforce needs. Those assumptions often reflect the current environment or include recent changes in the health care workforce and/or patient population, the practice locations of health care professionals, the...
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Policy Matters|
April 2017
Health Workforce Projections: Caveat Emptor
Thomas R. MIller, Ph.D., M.B.A.;
Thomas R. MIller, Ph.D., M.B.A.
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Jennifer Rock-Klotz, M.B.A.
Jennifer Rock-Klotz, M.B.A.
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ASA Monitor April 2017, Vol. 81, 10–12.
Citation
Thomas R. MIller, Nicholas M. Halzack, Jennifer Rock-Klotz; Health Workforce Projections: Caveat Emptor. ASA Monitor 2017; 81:10–12
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