Towards a better approach for physician and nurse requirements planning in Serbia: learning from the past

Background: The continual rise of health workforce unemployment in the country indicates the need to explore policy and planning of the physician and nurse requirements in Serbia. The study aimed to identify variables that were significantly related to physicians and nurses’ employment in the public healthcare sector of Serbia from 1961 to 2008 and to forecast the physicians and nurse’ requirements for the public healthcare sector by 2015. Methods: The significant interactions among six variables used for planning the physicians and nurses’ employment in public healthcare sector of Serbia have been identified in two periods: 1961-1982 and 1983-2008. The physician and nurse’ requirements for public healthcare sector by 2015 (with corresponding 95% confidence level -CL) have been forecasted with Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) / Transfer function (TF). The forecasting was based on assumptions that there will be no significant changes in the planning approach of physician and nurses’ requirements, population size and macroeconomic growth rate, production of physicians and healthcare service utilization in Serbia by 2015. Results: The ARIMA/TF modeling yielded correct and significant forecasts of physician’ (R = 0.983) and nurse’ (R = 0.989) employment in public healthcare sector of Serbia by 2015. The predictors for physician employment were the population size and GDP growth rate. The nurse staff was predicted by the number of physician staff. Physicians and nurses rates per