Better Data, Better Decisions: Quality of Information in Human Resource Planning

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Governments are concerned about the supply of health care workers but attempts to forecast supply generally fail. The effectiveness of health care planning rests partly on the quality of evidence about health human resources available to decision-makers. However evidence supplied by health care employers depends on the accuracy of organizational reporting systems Publicly funded health care organizations report on their expenditures on an annual basis but their human resource data is not necessarily either accurate or consistent. Organizations vary in how well they define, collect, organize and use data. A study of human resource data in the largest hospital corporation in Canada revealed data issues relevant to human resource planning at all stages of data input and management. For example, there was a lack of standardized definitions for data elements. Data was input by unskilled operatives in many departments and was far from accurate. Information relevant to human resources was included in a number of databases and the databases themselves were not integrated. As a result extraction of data was time consuming and correlation of data from different resources complicated. When organizations report to government funders, they translate data collected for their own purposes to fit government specifications. Given original data quality and inaccuracies due to the translation process, governments have only imperfect data as a basis for decision-making. An example of a data problem relevant both to in-house planning and government policy related to the difficulty of correlating formal contracts with hours of work. Many nurses at the study hospital worked full-time hours and were reported as full-time workers. However, a proportion of these nurses had part-time status. Defining nurses by hours worked rather than employment status became an issue when a government policy targeted greater full-time employment. Another problem related to government use of hospital vacancy data to indicate shortage, based on the assumption that vacancy indicated external turnover. However the study hospital, in common with many others, did not differentiate internal and external turnover. The data they provided did not fit the government's assumptions. Currently, the Ontario Government is reorganizing its information systems as a part of an initiative to increase accountability in the health care system. Considerable attention will need to be paid to what information they need to support human resource decisions for health care professionals. Specifically, they will need to consider how health care organizations can be mobilized to produce information useful both in their own human resource planners and the government.