Health Human Resources (HHR) in Healthcare

Health Human Resources (HHR)

• Also known as Human Resources for Health (HRH) or health workforce
• Defined as "all people engaged in actions whose primary intent is to enhance positive health outcomes"

Role of Human Resources in Healthcare

• Enable effective healthcare service delivery through staff performance monitoring and evaluation, compensation, and recruitment of competent employees
• Human Resources department is responsible for all employees and employee-related operations in any organization

Healthcare as a Service Sector

• Depends heavily on people to carry out its mission
• Human Resources (HR) accounts for a high proportion of budgets assigned to the health sector
• Estimated shortage of almost 4.3 million physicians, midwives, nurses, and support workers (WHO 2006)
• Projected global shortfall of 10 million health workers by 2030, mostly in low- and lower-middle-income countries

Types of Healthcare Organizations

• Physician Offices and Clinics
• Hospitals
• Nursing and Personal-Care Facilities
• Home Care
• Health and Allied Services
• Medical and Dental Laboratories
• Offices and Clinics of Other Health Practitioners
• Dentist's Offices and Clinics

Healthcare-Science or Art

• The Science of Healthcare: achieving and delivering high-quality healthcare products and services through scientific and innovative technology
• The Art of Healthcare: managing the human beings who provide the services and improve the products

Challenges for Health Systems

• Human Resources (Workforce)
• Physical Infrastructure
• Governance
• Financing

Healthcare Service Delivery

• Determined by patient satisfaction and employee satisfaction

Human Resource Management (HRM)

• The strategies, tactics, plans, and programs that healthcare organizations utilize to accomplish the work of the organization through its employees
• Includes acquiring, training, appraising, and compensating employees, and attending to their labor relations, health and safety, and fairness concerns

Key Initiatives of HR Management

• Workforce Planning
• Staffing and Selection
• Compensation and Benefits
• Employee and Labor Relations
• Government Compliance
• Training and Development
• Health, Safety, and Security

Human Resource Planning

• Includes all activities managers do to forecast current and future HR needs
• Must be done before recruitment and selection
• Demand forecasts estimate the number and qualifications the firm will need
• Supply forecasts estimate the availability and qualifications of current workers and those in the labor market

Human Resource Management Processes

• Acquisition
• Fairness
• Training
• Appraisal
• Compensation
• Labor Relations
• Health and Safety

Recruitment

• External recruiting: looking outside the firm for people who have not worked at the firm before
• Internal recruiting: filling positions within the firm
• Internal recruiting has benefits, including workers knowing the firm's culture and managers already knowing the candidates

HRM Planning: Outsourcing

• Outsourcing: contracting with outside workers rather than hiring them
• Outsourcing is more flexible for the firm and provides human capital at a lower cost
• However, outsourcing can lead to loss of control over output and contractors may not be committed to the firm

HR Challenges in Healthcare

• Managing Change
• Doing more with less
• Compliance with quality standards
• Implementing diversity planning and culturally competent care
• Preparing healthcare workers for new technologies
• Balancing professional and personal lives
• Succession planning

Insufficient Human Capacity

• In many developing countries, there is insufficient human capacity to make use of newly available resources
• Newly available resources are due to scientific advances, infusion of new money, and new drugs

Dimensions of HRH Performance

• Coverage: the extent to which the allocation of the workforce corresponds to needed services
• Productivity: the ratio of outputs relative to inputs
• Technical quality: the extent to which services have a positive impact on health status
• Sociocultural quality: the extent to which services are acceptable to users and meet their expectations
• Organization stability: the use of the workforce to guarantee the viability of services and their capacity to adapt to changing needs

Current Research Studies

• Patient satisfaction and employee satisfaction in healthcare
• Key recommendations include satisfaction in caring for patients, less complaints from customers, and change in employee behavior, skill, and attitude

Main HRH Challenges

• Absence of a national HRH strategy
• Centralized HRH decisions in the public sector
• Brain drain of HRH
• Variation of HRH wages and incentives between private and public sectors
• Inequitable distribution of health workforce among geographical areas, gender imbalance, skill mix, and shortage of them in remote areas
• Absence of continuous professional development system (CPD)
• Weak HRH information system