As featured on BusinessMirror: Rethinking healthcare workforce productivity
Today, the availability and productivity of healthcare professionals has become the primary constraint on health system performance. Whether the objective is reducing waiting lists, improving patient outcomes, increasing access or achieving financial sustainability, every improvement ultimately depends on having sufficient workforce capacity.
Yet the reality is that — in most regions and systems — an imbalance between demand and workforce supply is widening, creating a structural challenge that incremental improvements will not solve.
Demand for health services is rising
In part, that comes down to demographics. As demographic trends continue to evolve, healthcare organizations are likely to encounter greater demand for services that address complex and long-term health needs, requiring innovative and sustainable care approaches.
At the same time, patient needs are also becoming more complex. Advances in medicine mean more people survive conditions that were previously fatal but often require lifelong care management across multiple specialties. Mental health needs are also rising, placing additional pressure on already stretched services.
Patient expectations have also changed. Healthcare users increasingly expect their care to be timely, convenient and digitally enabled, reflecting experiences in other sectors. Health systems are therefore expected to deliver more care, to more people, with greater responsiveness than ever before.
Workforce supply is moving in the opposite direction
The problem is that healthcare labor supply is becoming increasingly constrained. As healthcare needs become more complex, providers are navigating workforce pressures that affect both clinical and operational functions. These challenges are driving renewed focus on workforce planning, productivity, and innovative approaches to care delivery. While shortages are most acute in low- and middle-income countries, almost every developed nation is experiencing significant workforce gaps.
Productivity unplugged
The good news is that the tools, models and technologies now exist to radically transform healthcare workforce productivity. And examples of leading practices are emerging from those health systems around the world taking bold steps to fundamentally address their workforce constraints.
1. The data route
Healthcare is fundamentally an information-driven industry. Every clinical decision depends on patient data: history, medications, allergies, diagnostics and prior encounters. In fragmented or paper-based systems, this information is scattered across locations and formats with clinicians
spending significant time searching, reconciling and re-entering data (often after hours in what many now call their ‘pajama-time’).
This creates two major inefficiencies. First, administrative duplication consumes clinical time and contributes to burnout. Second, coordination breaks down when data does not move smoothly across care settings.
By integrating data and enhancing EHRs, healthcare leaders can create a structured, shared record of truth. They can also increase efficiency and eliminate key bottlenecks while helping reduce the need to hire additional coders and informaticians as demand rises.
2. The scheduling route
When facing scarcity and constraint, there is a lot to be said for making better use of what you already have. Modern workforce management platforms enable organizations to match workforce demand with available skills in near real time. Staff can nominate availability, manage shift preferences, swap shifts digitally and be automatically matched to vacancies based on credentialing, competencies and regulatory requirements. That not only helps ensure that spare capacity and rostering teams are being utilized appropriately, it also removes a common ‘pebble in the shoe’ that comes from battling against outdated rostering systems in order to balance employees’ work and life.
3. The AI enablement route
Significant productivity benefits are rapidly being realized. Healthcare organizations are deploying generative and agentic AI to support administrative tasks such as clinical documentation, referral management, patient communications, claims processing and information retrieval, thereby helping to reduce the burden of repetitive work that contributes to healthcare workforce attrition and clinician burnout. Leading health systems are now developing agentic-led patient prep tools that could help ensure patients are properly prepared for their surgery visit, following up and checking in appropriately, and showing up to outpatient appointments.
With agents becoming part of the productivity solution, organizations will need to think differently about workforce planning. AI agents will need to be managed much like employees, with defined roles, ongoing training, performance monitoring and, when appropriate and as needs change, retirement. That speaks to the need for strong governance, shared architecture and clear ownership of AI capabilities and tools.
What is clear is that healthcare organizations cannot solve tomorrow’s workforce challenges using yesterday’s operating models. Improving workforce productivity requires more than incremental efficiencies or isolated technology investments — it demands a fundamental redesign of how work is organized, how care teams collaborate and how digital technologies are embedded across the enterprise.
In the Philippine Context
For the Philippines, healthcare workforce capacity is becoming an increasingly important constraint on access, quality and continuity of care. The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II) reported in 2026 that the country has only 21.2 healthcare workers per 10,000 people, less than half the World Health Organization’s benchmark of 44.5, and could face a shortage of around 290,000 healthcare professionals. The challenge is further compounded by the uneven distribution of healthcare workers across the country, with shortages particularly affecting areas outside major urban centers.
These workforce constraints come as demand for healthcare continues to grow and the country works to expand access under universal healthcare. At the same time, the Philippines continues to face the challenge of retaining healthcare professionals, with 20 percent of Filipino health professionals working overseas. This puts additional pressure on healthcare organizations to make better use of the workforce available to them.
As the healthcare system continues to evolve, healthcare facilities need to adapt fast. They should leverage on digital healthcare solutions to its full potential and work on healthcare workforce optimization.
This article draws on insights from the KPMG Thought Leadership publication “Closing the healthcare workforce gap.”
© 2026 R.G. Manabat & Co., a Philippine partnership and a member firm of the KPMG global organization of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International Limited, a private English company limited by guarantee. All rights reserved.
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This article is for general information purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice to a specific issue or entity. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent KPMG International or R.G. Manabat & Co.