Most spent on wages

Press, 31 August 1977, Page 7

Most spent on wages

Wellington reporter

Three out of every four dollars spent each year on health services are paid out either as wages or salaries. and in future greater emphasis must be placed on health manpower planning, according to the annual report of the Health Department. Manpower represented the most important and costly resource in the provision of health care. Five times as much was spent on manpower as on buildings. equipment and drugs combined, but its relative importance was often overlooked. Lack of manpower and

lack of resources were' the most obvious constraints to the development of health services: almost all countries reported shortages of health workers but few regularly reviewed the use made of existing manpower.

In periods of relative affluence manpower tended to be scarce and recruiting difficult, while in economically depressed times the opposite tended to apply the report said. Greater emphasis had to be placed on health manpower planning, and there was an urgent need to define the functions and tasks to be performed by health workers, and the

types of preparation and manpower needed to carry out each function and task.

This called for close coordination between the health services and the medical training schools, but, unfortunately, such co-ordination had been largely lacking in the past, the report said.

Planning efforts were unlikely to be effective if due account was not taken of the social, economic and (particularly) political climate. Health manpower planning should be a part of comprehensive health planning and should not become an independent activity.