Measurement and analysis of community health staffing standards

Abstract

Objective To measure the gap of community health staffing and establish new norms for community health facilities by means of the WHO Workload indicator of staffing need(WISN)method, for reference of the government in evaluation and decision making of community health staffing. Methods With Xicheng District of Beijing as an example, we collected data on community health staffing and calculated the total demand, measuring the total demand and supply, and gap or surplus in the staffing. Results in 2013, the demand of community health staffing was about 17.18 million standard equivalents in Xicheng, while the supply was 10.512 million.The WISN ratio was 0.67 for community health supply and demand, in which the ratio of physicians was close to 1, while that of nurses and public health workers was far below 1.850 extra community health staff was needed to reach the total of 2 602 persons. Conclusion The demand and supply of community health service in Xicheng District was seriously unbalanced, a huge gap featuring overstaffing of nurses and inadequate public health workers.This results from the enhancement of primary public health services and rising utilization of community healthcare services in recent years, which deserves high attention from government of all levels, by increasing the staffing of community health staffing standards. Key words: Community health services; Human resources; Health personnel planning