The SHARP way to plan health care services: A description of the system and some illustrative applications in nursing human resource planning

SHARP provides an analytical framework that for the first time brings together all major elements of the health care system and helps to organize our thoughts about the system as a system. (The acronym stands for System for Health Area Resource Planning; SHARP has been developed for Ontario, the largest of the Canadian provinces.) A framework for discussion is especially important during the current period of “health reform”, spurred largely by concerns to bring cost increases under control. The central message of this paper is that the planning process should be well informed and should take an integrated view of the health care system so that major future repercussions of actions taken today can be foreseen (albeit imperfectly). In reforming the system, it is important to anticipate both the requirements for health care services and the resources that are likely to be available to satisfy those requirements. That is where SHARP can be helpful. With its comprehensive and forward-looking view of the health care system, SHARP can usefully inform the current debate about the future of the health care sector. The main features of SHARP are described and the system is illustrated with special reference to nurses and the services that they provide.