Note on medical workforce data in Australia

This paper is concerned with describing, and then analysing, the available sources of data on the supply of medical practitioners in Australia. It is shown that one data set can be regarded as an overestimate and another data set as an underestimate of the medical workforce. These benchmarks enable the accuracy of a third source of data to be determined. Statistical analysis indicates that there are significant differences between the three sources of data. The paper considers all medical practitioners, all specialists and two specialties viz., radiology and internal medicine