From: Personnel planning in general practices: development and testing of a skill mix analysis method
(1) What should a skill mix method measure? | Needs from patient’s perspective (3–5) |
Needs from professional’s perspective (3–5) | |
Community’s own perspective of its needs (3–5) | |
Present demand (n.c.) | |
Future demand (3–5) | |
Present capacity (n.c.) | |
Confront demand and supply (3–5) | |
Forecast effect of changes in patient demand (4/5) | |
Whether skill mix is generally the solution to health delivery problems (3–5) | |
Whether there is balance between patients care demand/needs and professionals time resources (3–5) | |
Task distribution (4/5) | |
Task overlap among primary care team members (n.c.) | |
Workload (n.c.) | |
Importance of each job task for each professional (perspective of the professional) (2–4) | |
Time spent per task per professional (2–4) | |
Training needs of health care professionals (n.c.) | |
(2) On whom should the focus for measuring demand be placed? | Patients of a practice/health care center (n.c.) |
Population (n.c.) | |
Community (n.c.) | |
Practice and community (3–5) | |
Special patients groups (elderly, chronically ill, etc.) (n.c.) | |
(3) Which sources, in particular data, should be used? | Already available data (i.e., medical records) (3–5) |
Collect additional data (qualitative or quantitative) (4/5) | |
Knowledge of the primary health care team (n.c.) | |
(4) How should demand/need and skill mix be determined? | Based on simplified classification areas of demand/need (e.g., planning or coordinating care, prescribing, guidance in care, etc.) or skill mix (e.g., define core tasks) (3–5) |
Based on a very detailed overview of demand/need and skill mix (n.c.) | |
5) How should demand/need and skill mix be illustrated? | Purely descriptive/reporting (numbers) (n.c.) |
Visual overview (e.g., create simple analytic maps, baseline snapshot of practice’s patient population demographics) (3–5) | |
(6) How important are the particular characteristics of the method? | Expenditure of time (quickly applicable) (3–5) |
Practicability (simple to apply) (3–5) | |
Costs for applying the instrument (n.c.) | |
7) How important is it that the method enables to: | Identify strengths and weaknesses within a multidisciplinary primary health care team (4/5) |
Conduct a comparison between practices (comparative approach) (n.c.) | |
Forecast demand (n.c.) | |
Identify health need priorities (n.c.) | |
Identify health inequalities (2–4) | |
Interpret practice data (3–5) | |
Manage workload (n.c.) | |
Support planning of staffing needs (competencies) (4/5) | |
Forecast amount of staff required (personnel planning) (n.c.) | |
Conduct long-term strategic planning (3–5) | |
Conduct a comprehensive environmental analysis (identify risk factors and causes of ill health, accessibility, efficiency, etc.) (n.c.) |