Medical Manpower Models: Need, Demand and Supply

As planning has moved into center stage in health care delivery, Comprehensive Health Planning and other agencies have sought advice in estimating the extent of manpower shortages and in finding policies to remedy existing ones. We propose a framework for examining these questions and summarize the literature that bears on them. We begin by looking at expectations of the medical care delivery system and at what it can provide. We then discuss a range of models used to forecast physician requirements, demand for physicians, and the distribution of physicians, and examine their implications for the formulation of public policy. Given the nature of the topic, more questions are raised than answers provided.