The impact of workforce flexibility on older peoples’ services.

The health workforce has undergone unprecedented change over the past decade. Several countries have introduced substantial workforce changes to address staffing shortages in medicine, nursing and the allied health professions, and in some cases, to improve the productivity and efficiency of health services. This raft of changes, with various labels, including workforce redesign and re-engineering, has facilitated possibly the largest transformation in professional role boundaries in the history of the development of the professions. The result has been the introduction of new types of workers and new roles for several existing staff. The impact of these changes on service effectiveness and efficiency remains largely unknown.