Standardizing Health Workforce Data in Canada: Legal and Regulatory Levers for Harmonized Collection and Sharing

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Health Policy
• Data Management

Background:

• Comprehensive, standardized health workforce data is crucial for effective planning.
• Current provincial regulations and data privacy legislation present challenges to data standardization and sharing.
• Existing leading practices in some Canadian provinces offer opportunities for improvement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify legal and regulatory mechanisms facilitating standardized health workforce data collection and sharing.
• To propose a framework for enhancing health workforce data standardization and utilization for planning.
• To explore key facilitators for a cohesive data infrastructure.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing legal and regulatory frameworks across Canadian provinces.
• Identification of leading practices in health workforce data collection and sharing.
• Development of a proposed framework based on identified facilitators.

Main Results:

• Provincial regulations and data privacy legislation require better alignment for robust health workforce planning data infrastructure.
• Key facilitators for improved data standardization include umbrella legislation, privacy frameworks supporting data use, anti-discrimination data collection, and secure data access infrastructure.
• Leading practices can be scaled up to create a more cohesive approach to data collection and sharing.

Conclusions:

• Aligning legal and regulatory mechanisms is essential for improving health workforce data standardization.
• The proposed framework provides a viable foundation for enhanced data utilization in healthcare planning.
• Implementing these facilitators can lead to improved healthcare delivery across Canada.