Computer-Assisted Physician Requirement Planning

Hospital administrations in the developing–world face great challenges to meet the demand for more physicians in hospitals. A computer-based physician requirement planning model is a user-friendly approach in response to such demands. This article presents a new methodology based on a Graphic User Interface (GUI) using Java. Information on work days/ hours, activity-wise standard times and annual workload information, bed capacity and occupancy figures are inputted in a visual display screen and the model generates activity-wise and overall physician requirements. Current availability is entered and prevailing productivity levels are estimated. An institutional summary presents overall and specialty-wise current availability and requirement of physicians. Computerisation empowers policy makers/planners to respond promptly to requests by hospitals for manpower assessment and decide objectively on additional posts. It enables health administration to visualize human resource implications of changing utilisation scenarios and variation in model parameters.