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Do available predictions of future medical workforce requirements provide a sensible basis for planning? Yes

Peter M Brooks
Med J Aust 2012; 197 (5): . || doi: 10.5694/mja12.11016
Published online: 3 September 2012

Professor Peter Brooks advocates increasing productivity and reducing demand to prepare for what lies ahead

If future increased health care demand in Australia is simply met by increasing medical workforce capacity by the year 2025, our country will go bankrupt. However, recently released modelling shows us how we can meet this demand in other ways.


  • Australian Health Workforce Institute, University of Melbourne and University of Queensland, Melbourne, VIC.


Correspondence: brooksp@unimelb.edu.au

Competing interests:

No relevant disclosures.

  • 1. Health Workforce Australia. Health workforce 2025 — volume 1. http://www.hwa.gov.au/health-workforce-2025 (accessed Jul 2012).
  • 2. Productivity Commission. Australia’s health workforce. Canberra: Productivity Commission, 2005. http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/9480/healthworkforce.pdf (accessed Jul 2012).
  • 3. Dwyer M, Walsh K. Perspective: Mister 1% fails to figure it out in another tax grab. Australian Financial Review 2012; 5-6 May: 41-42.
  • 4. Begg S, Vos T, Barker B, et al. The burden of disease and injury in Australia 2003. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2007. (AIHW Cat. No. PHE 82.)
  • 5. Gorman DF, Brooks PM. On solutions to the shortage of doctors in Australia and New Zealand. Med J Aust 2009; 190: 152-156. <MJA full text>
  • 6. Kambayashi S. The future of medicine — squeezing out the doctor. The Economist 2012; 2 Jun.
  • 7. Barker R. 2030: the future of medicine — avoiding a medical meltdown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • 8. Smith AC, Gray LC. Telemedicine across the ages. Med J Aust 2009; 190: 15-19. <MJA full text>

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