Abstract

The health human resources supply in Canada swings reactively between over- and under-supply. There are numerous policy actors in this arena, each of whom could contribute to good data collection and an agreed-on process for decision-making. This could form the basis for evidence-informed policy. Absent these tools for pan-Canadian health human resources policy development, smaller health jurisdictions are experimenting with quality improvement initiatives which, when properly evaluated, can discover useful methods of aligning patient and community needs with healthcare resources.