| dc.description.abstract | Health workers play a crucial role in performing health system functions. Thus, an effective health care system highly depends on the system being sufficiently scaled in terms of health workers and budget. The main purpose of this study is to predict the number of health workers (e.g. doctors, nurses, and caring personnel) as well as health spending during the projection period 2021-40. The factor considered to affect these outcomes is the demographic change in the population by age and sex, and data were collected from Statistics Norway (SSB). The numbers of health care workers and health spending for the period 2002-2020 were collected from OECD. Data analysis was performed using the time series analysis and multiple linear regression. The values of R2 for the models were higher than 99.5% demonstrating all models fit the data up to 2020 well. Consequently, the models were used to project the health workers and health spending for the period 2021-40 and under three scenarios; main, low, and high alternative for population growth. According to the results, the growth of doctors and health spending during the projection period 2021-40 is significant, 73% and 81% respectively. The projections for the future number of nurses and caring personnel are less significant, 21% for each. However, the growth of each outcome during the entire projection period is not constant through the period. The results of this study help to achieve a proper decision in both the short and longer term. Furthermore, in this study, we investigate key policies associated with health workers shortage and maldistribution. It is likely that the health care system will face considerable challenges in meeting demand in the near future unless there are changes in technology, treatment, and general health in the elderly population to reduce demand due to demographic changes. | eng |