Family Physician Workforce Projections in Saskatchewan

According to the survey conducted by the College of Family Physicians of Canada in October 2005, 15 percent, almost 4.8 million adult Canadians reported not having a family physician.  This significant number of Canadians reported that they do not have a family physician in spite of the fact that there was an increase in the number of family physicians in healthcare markets.  In Saskatchewan,  the trend of increasing numbers of general practitioners was also evident - the total number of general practitioners increased from 693 in 2000-2001 to 767 in 2006-2006.

It is important for policy makers to have a projection for the need for family physicians in Saskatchewan in order to have a plan in human resource allocation in healthcare markets. Therefore, an evaluation of human resource need in health care markets needs to be completed.   

This research

This project will examine the physician needs in Saskatchewan and will forecast the number of family physician needed for each health region.  Using health regions as a unit of analysis, supply of physician workforce will be estimated in a reduced form.  Both demand and supply side factors such as income, demographic characteristics, physician migration, and factors capturing substitution among various healthcare inputs will be included as regressors.  Using estimated coefficients from the regression analysis, numbers of family physician need will be projected under different hypothetical scenarios including change in population and disease profile or change in physician profiles.