•Shortage and maldistribution of workforce : Demand for healthcare workers overall exceeds supply. A disproportionate number of highly quali ﬁed health professionals and an insu ﬃcient number of technical and support-level personnel, combined with the geographical maldistribution of the workforce, results in major disparities in health outcomes. •Quality of skill set and mix : A poor de ﬁnition of competency frameworks and skill mix in the workforce poses considerable risk to the quality of healthcare and the value delivered to patients and to the public. •Stakeholder alignment and coordination : Several distinct factors affecting health workforce planning, such as poor coordination and weak linkages among stakeholders, present challenges in aligning planner responsiveness with decision-maker needs. •Changing workforce roles : Transforming the health service to be more value-based with an integrated MOC through the redesign of care pathways has workforce implications, including adapting and equipping professionals with the skills and capabilities to take on new and dynamic roles and focusing on team approaches rather than individual contributions. These challenges call for a number of changes to health system’s workforce strategy. First, health workforce planning and development should be aligned with the interests of Vision 2030 , the health transformation agenda and national health security priorities, and should include programmes that tackle capacity building, skill enhancement, retention and motivation, task shifting and optimisation, diversi ﬁcation and inclusion regulation and standardisation, and monitoring and evaluation. Second, there needs to be a clear national health workforce governance structure and strategic direction that leads, empowers and streamlines health workforce planning and development. Third, active stakeholder coordination and systematic engagement are required to understand needs, align interests and ensure that health workforce planning and development outcomes are demand oriented, relevant, evidence-based, trusted and supported by stakeholders. Fourth, the provision of transparent, reliable and timely evidence-based research from comprehensive and systematic data gathering across integrated platforms is essential for effective healthcare analysis and decision- making. Fifth, adaptive and evidence-based health workforce simulation and forecasting models need to be established to routinely monitor the situation of the health workforce and enable informed predictive and scenario-based planning. Based on the most recent data from a number of government sources, there are approximately 300,000 physicians and nurses in the Saudi Arabia health system, approximately 100,000 of whom are Saudi citizens. Depending on the source, the number of non-Saudi physicians and nurses ranges from 146,000 to 210,000 (see Figure 4). 42 Sustainability and Resilience in the Saudi Arabian Health System The Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience Figure 4 Number of physicians and nurses, Saudi and non-Saudi a Excludes medical cities and some university hospitals. Source: Alghaith T et al., 2021.85,508101,671103,33998,679 146,271182,243209,254173,909 Human Resources for Health a (2019)Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (2019)Saudi Health Council Balanced Distribution Data Set (2018)Ministry of Health (2019) Saudi Non-Saudi Total272,588 312,593 283,914 231,799

PHSSR Saudi Arabia 2025