Professor Bruce Hollingsworth, Director of Health Economics at in the Division of Health Research at Lancaster University, is Chief Investigator on a new A$2.8 million grant awarded by the Australian Government. Led by the University of Queensland (UQ), the project funded by the Medical Research Future Fund aims to improve health workforce planning in Australia.

The project will undertake research to understand the optimal health workforce combination, incorporating the preferences of consumers and healthcare providers to identify better ways to incentivise team care.

Professor Hollingsworth said: “This grant will look at practitioners’ scope of practice, determining optimal team formation, and how this impacts on population health and health system efficiency.”

It will analyse the primary health workforce and propose new models to coordinate multidisciplinary teams of health care professionals who work to their full scope of practice to provide quality patient care.

As well as UQ the project will be delivered in collaboration with researchers from the Australian National University (ANU), Monash University and the University of Western Australia (UWA), and in partnership with Queensland Health, ACT Health, Health Consumers Queensland and Health Care Consumers Association (ACT).