The objective of the initiative is to provide support to Member States to design and implement their policies related to healthcare workforce retention, task-shifting and regional medical deserts.
This should be achieved, through the development of supporting tools –guidelines, scaling up of good practices, creating a platform for policy dialogue to advance on these challenging issues.
Objectives
The initiatives aim specifically at:
- Identifying and analyzing factors related to the conception and implementation of reforms on retention policies, medical deserts and task-shifting, and developing practical guidelines for the public authorities and healthcare providers which will serve as the operational tools supporting their healthcare workforce policies in relation to challenges in these fields;
- Analyzing and suggesting possible changes in the legal and policy environment and ways to provide incentives to remove legal and other barriers to the recruitment and retention of healthcare workforce in underserved areas;
- Implementing effective strategies, identifying best practices and facilitating the exchange of these practices including at regional or local level (e.g. through information sessions), assessing the suitability/ground for broader practice dissemination;
- Contributing to a network on health workforce linked to the EU health policy platform (EU-HPP), to ensure the sustainability of results achieved under individual projects , continuation of dissemination and scale up of best practices amongst Member States beyond the action’s term;
- Organizing workshops and seminars to ensure joint reflection among the actors participating in the selected initiatives and relevant experts and, when relevant, cross-fertilisation of ideas across the three areas of reforms at stake;
- Enhancing knowledge, including by targeted studies and reports related to the development of retention policies, the development of policies on medical deserts, and the implementation of task-shifting projects;
- Providing practical training and developing educational material, which could be further exploited by public authorities and healthcare providers engaged in the health workforce field;
- Organising events to present the lessons learnt and the guidelines to the relevant public authorities and healthcare providers.
Activities
Activities to be carried out under such an initiative may include but are not limited to:
- Work on understanding the workforce determinants (e.g: minimum staffing levels for optimal healthcare delivery/health system functioning/ safety and quality of care assurance) and the needed changes for implementation ;
- Monetary incentives: assessment of size and nature of incentives required in view of work force retention, building also on available data on historical mobility patterns derived from Commission’s database (recognition of professional qualifications) and on survey with healthcare professionals.
- Non-monetary incentives: assessment of size and nature of incentives required in view of work force retention: survey with healthcare professionals, best practice exchange between MS;
- Consensus-building exercise on optimal mix of retention policy measures: multicriteria analysis, with targeted stakeholder groups.
- Recommendations on how to retain the retirement-age workforce in activity
Budget
The Commission considers that proposals requesting an EU contribution of approx. 400.000 EUR and a duration of 36 month would appropriately address the specific workforce related challenges. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submissions and selection of proposals requesting other amounts or duration.
The grant agreement(s) will be awarded to those ranked highest, up to the available budget of 800.000 EUR (EU-Contribution).
Deadline
10 June 2020 17:00:00 Brussels time
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