Page 124 - U4SSC KPIs Verification Manual - A guide for verifiers

Dimension Society and Culture
Sub-Dimension Education, Health and Culture

Category Health
KPI Name Physicians
KPI No. SC: EH: H:3C Type: Core Type: Structural

Definition / Number of physicians per 100 000 inhabitants
Description

Rationale / “The availability of physicians is an important indicator of the strength of a city’s
Interpretation / health system. There is evidence that the number of physicians is positively
Benchmarking associated with immunization coverage, outreach of primary care, and infant, child
and maternal survival.
The classification of health workers used is based on criteria for vocational
education and training, regulation of health professions, and activities and
tasks of jobs, i.e., a framework for categorizing key workforce variables
according to shared characteristics. The WHO framework largely draws on
the latest revisions to the internationally standardized classification systems of
the International Labour Organization (International Standard Classification of
Occupations), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(International Standard Classification of Education), and the United Nations
Statistics Division (International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic
Activities). Depending on the nature of each country's situation and the means
of measurement, data are available for up to 9 categories of health workers
in the aggregated set, and up to 18 categories in the disaggregated set. The
latter essentially reflects attempts to better distinguish some subgroups of the
workforce according to assumed differences in skill level and skill specialization”.
(WHO, 2016)

Physicians includes generalist medical practitioners and specialist medical
practitioners.
The city shall report on the number of licensed physicians and report as full-time
equivalence (FTE).
An improving trend and higher values are considered positive.
Source(s) NOTE – WHO. Global Health Workforce Statistics. 2016. Retrieved from <http://
www .who .int/ hrh/ statistics/ hwfstats/ >
Methodology Calculate as:
Numerator: Number of general or specialized physicians working in the city (FTE).

Denominator: One 100 000th of the city’s population.
Unit Number / 100 000 inhabitants.

114 U4SSC KPIs Verification Manual-A guide for verifiers