PHSSR Saudi Arabia 2025

Workforce in flow and out flow can impact health service delivery, funding, quality and equity. Workforce mobility occurs at two levels: (1) the in flux and out flux of the workforce to and from the country and (2) the mobility of the workforce among different local health organisations. Saudi Arabia’s international and national workforce is an asset to the health system for several reasons. First, the blend of international and national professionals provides a diverse range of expertise and perspectives, enhancing the quality of care and fostering innovation. Second, the presence of foreign professionals helps to transfer international best practices into the Saudi healthcare system. Third, the commitment to nurturing national talents ensures a sustainable workforce that understands local cultural and social nuances. Lastly, this combination facilitates knowledge exchange, promoting continuous learning and improvement in healthcare provision. Saudi Arabia maintains strict rules about working simultaneously at different healthcare organisations, with the exception of academics who are permitted to work part-time in private and public health service and in educational institutions. These strict rules were justi fied by the siloed working culture of academia and care provision. The transformational approach of Vision 2030 and the experience of crisis management during the Covid-19 pandemic made way for new rules that allow a subset of healthcare practitioners to work within other organisations. Although the aim of workforce mobility is the improvement of workforce morale and well-being, it also helps to address issues such as staff shortages, maldistribution and skill mismatches, all of which can have immediate and long-term impacts on the e fficiency and equity of healthcare delivery. Health workforce planning and development efforts are expensive and time-consuming, and they require the integration and collaboration of multiple stakeholders in the health service, education, human resources and labour sectors. Such massive investments call for an evidence-based approach to workforce planning to e fficiently and effectively reach the target goals of the existing and future health workforce. Striking a dynamic balance between workforce supply and demand is a huge undertaking. Workforce planning and development activities need to be justi fied with regard to producing an adequate number of professionals, with the required skills, in the right time and place and for a justi fiable cost. The national workforce planning platform currently contains data on the health workforce throughout the talent pipeline. It provides data-driven insights based on (1) integration with the MoE, SCFHS, MoH, different healthcare providers and the General Statistics Authority; (2) predictive modelling of supply and demand based on multiple variables; (3) cross- validation through the exchange of data between participating organisations; and (4) con fidentiality, integrity and availability of data, governed by the best practice standards of the National Data Management O ffice. However, there are multiple opportunities to build on including (1) a national health workforce strategy to de fine the number of professionals needed, directions and priorities and (2) the horizontal expansion of the Saudi standard classi fication of occupations to include new occupations and its vertical expansion to adapt to more flexible and standardised career paths. 3.2 Workforce for health system resilience During Covid-19, the Saudi Arabia health system was challenged on multiple fronts. The most signi ficant of these challenges was having a su fficiently skilled workforce to deal with the pandemic within health facilities and communities. A national multi-organisation effort between the MoH, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, MoE, SCFHS, SHC and many other organisations was set up, resulting in the creation of the National Rapid and Emergency Response Programmes. One outcome was an online platform with multi-modal learning delivery targeting three goals: (1) augmenting the health workforce by training volunteers to participate in management, tracking con firmed and suspected Covid-19 cases and tracking people who had been in contact with individuals with con firmed or suspected Covid-19; (2) Reskilling critical-care service delivery personnel to operate e fficiently in intensive care units; and (3) Upskilling the health 46 Sustainability and Resilience in the Saudi Arabian Health System The Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience