Why is health workforce data key to better health care access?

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(Text appears on the screen announcing that this is an Ask an Expert video and provides the name of the speaker and their job title: Natalie Damiano, Director, Health Workforce Information.)

(A question appears on the screen: “Why is health workforce data key to better health care access?”)

(Muffled, indistinct conversations in the background. Music ends.)

Natalie: When we think about the crisis in the health workforce right now and the fact that we hear in the news every day a lot of the challenges that we’re all dealing with access to health care, health care… underpinning that health care is the health workforce. There would be no health care without the health workforce. So one of the big challenges we have is that we don’t have… we have significant data gaps in our health workforce space. So by bringing people to the new standard and then spreading it to even more professions, we can gather more information. 

We don’t know enough information about our health workforce, where they’re coming from, where they’re going, how long they stay in the profession, where they move. We need that information in order to build solutions to help solve the problems we have that ultimately will allow Canadians better access to health care and therefore better health.

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