Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về sinh học được đăng trên tạp chí sinh học quốc tế đề tài : Physician supply forecast: better than peering in a crystal ball? | Human Resources for Health BioMed Central Open Access Review Physician supply forecast better than peering in a crystal ball Dominique Roberfroid Christian Leonard and Sabine Stordeur Address Belgian Health Care Knowledge Centre Brussels Belgium Email Dominique Roberfroid - Christian Leonard - Sabine Stordeur - Corresponding author Published 13 February 2009 Received 18 February 2008 Human Resources for Health 2009 7 10 doi l478-449l-7-l0 Accepted 13 February 2009 This article is available from http content 7 l 10 2009 Roberfroid et al licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http licenses by which permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract__ Background Anticipating physician supply to tackle future health challenges is a crucial but complex task for policy planners. A number of forecasting tools are available but the methods advantages and shortcomings of such tools are not straightforward and not always well appraised. Therefore this paper had two objectives to present a typology of existing forecasting approaches and to analyse the methodology-related issues. Methods A literature review was carried out in electronic databases Medline-Ovid Embase and ERIC. Concrete examples of planning experiences in various countries were analysed. Results Four main forecasting approaches were identified. The supply projection approach defines the necessary inflow to maintain or to reach in the future an arbitrary predefined level of service offer. The demand-based approach estimates the quantity of health care services used by the population in the future to project physician .
