The Economics of Health Professional Education and Careers

The formation of health professionals is critical for the health system to function and to achieve its universal health coverage (UHC) goals, and this is well recognized by the majority of governments that plan to ensure enough training places and aim to regulate in order to ensure quality. But the importance of market forces is often overlooked, resulting in interventions and regulations that often fail to achieve their intended effects. This publication aims to inform the design of health professionals’ education policies to better manage health labor market forces toward UHC. It documents what is known about the influence of market forces on the health-professional formation process. The report sought to answer the following questions: What have been the large global and regional trends in the development of health professions? How have these trends affected the career decisions of current and potential health professionals? What is the evidence base on the value and effectiveness of health professional education of different types? How has the market for health professional education evolved, and with what interrelationships with the health labor and health care markets? The contexts of the market for health professional training have been subject to important changes in recent decades, in particular: the growing extent of employment of mid-level cadres of health professionals; changes in technology and the associated growth of high skilled occupations; the increasing interconnectedness of national health systems through globalization, with its implications for international health professional mobility; and the greater complexity of the public–private mix in employment options. There is a need to ensure that market forces align with the intentions of planning and regulation and the needs of UHC goals. This publication provides recommendations to support the design of policies that help to achieve these.