The provision of human resources in adequate quantity and with appropriate competence to deliver and support the needed services is crucial for any planning. This is especially true for the planning in the health sector. The health care sector is a highly labor-intensive field – health personnel expenditures may account for about 60-75% of total expenditures. That's why health personnel planning is one of the key points in the overall planning process.

Health personnel planning takes place at two levels: macro and micro. At a macrolevel there is a need to plan for the sufficient number of workers, but not to exceed the need. At the microlevel the functions and the assignments of workers needs to be determined. In real life, the two levels are pursued simultaneously: it is difficult to say precisely how many nurses, surgeons, etc should be trained until their functions and work loads have been clarified and quantified.

The health personnel planning has a multifaceted nature. The framework used for analyzing it is complex. The one, which we are going to present to you, has been used in several countries, and proved useful in practice. This framework has four parts:

1. Supply analysis and projection of supply includes measuring the current supply of all types of health workers and projecting the supply forward to target dates ten to twenty years in the future, including anticipated additions of new graduates; and estimated subtractions for death, migration, retirement, and change of profession.

2. Demand analysis and projection of demand includes evaluating the effective economic demand for health services from both the private and public sector and projecting the effective economic demand forward to ten- to twenty-year target dates.

3. Productivity analysis and projection is the estimation of the average number of services per health worker per unit of time, and projection of changes.

4. Matching future supply and demand includes comparing the projected supply with the projected demand, and recommending necessary adjustments to effect a balance in light of inevitable constraints.

Supply can be brought into balance with demand (and this is the request of market) by either increasing supply or increasing productivity. An increase in productivity is limited by the standards of acceptable quality. On an economic basis, total services may be increased at the same cost by increasing units of service per health worker, or substituting current workers with less expensive health workers. As a concept it sounds quite simple but in real life (and we will see that in further discussion) it is rather complex.

Let’s discus the framework in detail.