The effects of social innovations on the healthcare labour market

The sustainability and accessibility of healthcare are under pressure. The demand for care is rising faster than the number of care providers. Besides paying more attention to prevention and organising care differently, it is important to work more efficiently with the available care (staff) capacity. Social innovations aimed at renewing labour organisations and employment relations can help with this. Ecorys brought these social innovations into focus.

Background

Double ageing and rising care costs put pressure on the sustainability and accessibility of care. Providing high-quality, affordable and accessible care is an increasing challenge. In addition, staff shortages are expected to increase further.

Therefore, it is necessary to future-proof healthcare. In this, it is important to focus on a combination of attracting (new groups of) potential care providers and promoting retention of care providers. It is also necessary to make more efficient use of the care (staff) capacity that is available. Social innovations that deal with renewing work organisation and labour relations can help with this.

Ecorys identified the potential benefits of these social innovations. Three applications of social innovations in healthcare were looked at: (1) task reallocation in GP care and surgery, (2) job carving in long-term care, and (3) promoting cooperation between formal and informal care providers.

Key findings

The study was conducted in three steps. First, the theoretical maximum feasible effect of social innovations on staff capacity in care was identified. Next, the effects of social innovations on staff retention, unused labour potential, efficiency and quality of care were investigated. Ultimately, it formulated bottlenecks and advised on policy options for scaling up. 

The study shows that a significant part of general practitioner capacity can potentially be freed up by using task reallocation. The effects on general practitioner retention appear positive, the effects on unutilised labour potential and efficiency are nil and the quality of care is expected to remain the same. In surgery, the effects are smaller because job reallocation is currently already largely deployed.

Jobcarving in long-term care will have limited effect on freeing up capacity among care professionals. Jobcarving appears to have little effect on retention, a greater effect on increasing unused labour potential, no effect on efficiency and is expected to have an equal effect on quality of care.

Finally, in theory, task shifting to informal care personnel could free up some of the capacity of care professionals. The effect of this on retention of care professionals is yet unknown.The question is whether it is desirable and feasible for a large part of the tasks to be taken over by informal care providers.

For all the results and more information, read the full report (Dutch).