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Reform Support
Health and Social Care Workforce Planning

Supporting reforms to improve the quality and sustainability of our healthcare systems

Funding Programme
Technical Support Instrument (TSI)
Year
2021

Health and Social Care Workforce Planning in Ireland 

The Commission will support the Department of Health in strengthening health workforce planning in Ireland, through building technical capacity and providing the necessary tools and procedures, including a health workforce model. This will enable the Department of Health to generate projections of supply and demand for all major categories of health professionals and to develop targeted policy measures to ensure an effective health workforce. 

Context 

Ireland faces challenges in recruitment and retention of nurses, doctors and other health and social care professionals. Ireland is relying heavily on the immigration of health and social care professionals to the country despite having the highest number of medical graduates per capita in the EU – an unsustainable situation. At the same time, Ireland aims to implement an ambitious health and social care system reform, the Sláintecare Reform Programme, which aims to address many of the challenges the health and social care system is facing. 

Support delivered 

The support with be delivered in collaboration with AARC Consulting and it will deliver: a health and social care workforce planning strategy and action plan, a health and social care workforce planning model, health and social care workforce projections and gap analysis. Finally, support includes recommendations for health and social care workforce reforms, as well as communication activities. 

Results achieved 

The expected result and ultimate objective of this project is the development of scenario-based projections of health and social care workforce supply and demand which informs a strategy, action plan and a set of recommendations for ongoing strategic health and social care workforce planning.  The project will be carried out in the context of the Sláintecare Reform Programme. It sets out to inform the recommendations for health and social care workforce reforms as well as the population health approach to health and social care sector planning.  

More about the project