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Canada needs a better health data infrastructure to support our healthcare heroes

by Ivy Lynn Bourgeault
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Canada’s health workers have been here for all of us throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. It is time for us to be there for them.

That’s why dozens of associations, healthcare unions, networks, educators and researchers from across the country came together this week to call on the federal government to make significant and immediate investments in data infrastructures to better plan for and support the health workforce.

Improved health system planning through better health workforce data can make a world of difference for health workers and the Canadian public. In a pandemic, it can make the difference between life and death.

In a petition to the government of Canada, signatories from across the country, including the Canadian Health Workforce Network, the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, the Canadian Medical Association and the College of Family Physicians of Canada, among many others, are calling on the federal government to address critical data and information gaps and help coordinate the collection and analysis of enhanced workforce data in support of decision-making by provinces, territories, regions and training programs.

Longstanding neglected health workforce planning issues predate the pandemic, and the lack of even basic information governments in Canada currently have about the health workforce imperils the work they do and the care we all receive.

Most Canadians probably don’t realize that we lack data on the most basic components of our health workforce.

We lack data about the scope of work of healthcare workers, about the diversity of the workforce, about the Indigenous or racial identity and language of service. We don’t know how different health workforce teams work together or how can they be recruited, trained and retained where they are most needed.

In some critical sectors, such as home care, long-term care and mental health care, we don’t even know how many healthcare workers there are.

Safe, high-quality care for patients is tied to safe, high-quality work for health workers.

Pre-pandemic, the health workforce was overstretched, and there was growing concern about accessing timely care close to home. The pandemic has caused critical staffing shortages — a direct result of inadequate planning. This has contributed to an enormous mental health burden on health workers.

We risk unprecedented attrition from the health workforce. This will inevitably lead to reductions in access to safe, high-quality care and increased wait times for patients.

Until barriers to effective health workforce planning are addressed through better health workforce data, Canada can expect inadequate planning for population needs now and into the future, inefficient deployment of health workers, persistent maldistribution of services, and perpetuation of current inequities.

Without essential health workforce data, we will continue to make decisions in the dark, with incomplete, misleading and non-standardized information that is disconnected from the real-world experience of those at the point of care.

It’s long past time the federal government play a stronger leadership role in helping address this critical health workforce data gap.

The federal government should create a dedicated coordinating body – a health workforce agency, akin to the Public Health Agency of Canada — with a mandate to spearhead robust health data in Canada.

This agency should significantly enhance existing health workforce data infrastructure to standardize data collection and analysis across workers, sectors and jurisdictions, with links to relevant patient information, healthcare utilization and outcome data, for more fit-for-purpose planning at the provincial, territorial, regional and training program levels.

In the interim, the federal government should provide targeted funding to the provinces and territories to begin to immediately address critical shortages.

We can’t afford to wait. 

Photo courtesy of iStock

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