title: [Management of needed health care workers in primary care. Automating the calculation].
abstract: The Santa Coloma de Gramenet Primary Care Service has designed a new tool to standardize and automate the process of planning the number of needed health care workers. The tool is divided in two parts: a calculator, which gives guidance on the foreseeable risk depending on the activity and the health care workers' workload, and sentinel indicators; the main is the "welfare basic level", that is the percentage structure of visited patients and their delay at 2, 3 and 7 calendar days, assessing the impact on the care of the population. The results of its use in the summer of 2010 have demonstrated its efficiency by lowering the needed workers with respect to 2009, achieving a better distribution according to the workload and improving the economic management. Given that the necessary data are accessible through computerized databases and its simple use, we believe it to be exportable to other fields.
authors.affiliation: Servicio de Atención Primaria de Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Instituto Catalán de la Salud, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Barcelona, España. afabregat.ics@gencat.cat
authors.forename: Amèlia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fabregat
authors.forename: José Antonio
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Martín
authors.forename: Nemesio
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Moreno
authors.forename: M Dolores
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Reina
authors.forename: Aureli
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Serrat
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001331:Automation; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D005544:Forecasting; D006285:Health Planning; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006280:Health Workforce / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D011320:Primary Health Care; D013030:Spain; D013997:Time Factors; D016526:Workload