Analysis of the Philippine's Deployment Cap Policy on healthcare workers

ABSTRACT

@#When an increasing number of cases strained the country's healthcare system, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the Philippines' workforce vulnerabilities even further. The Philippine government responded by imposing a deployment ban for healthcare workers going abroad in 2020, followed by a deployment cap in 2021. This paper focused on the policy development stage, specifically analyzing the factors that influenced the development of the deployment cap to address the Philippines' problem on healthcare worker shortage. Various sources of information were gathered by conducting a literature and document review, including local main news sources, published literature, government records, organizational documents, position statements, and social media posts from key interest groups such as professional groups and civil servants. The 3I+E (Institutions, Interests, Ideas and External Factors) Framework was used to analyze the factors influencing the policy formulation/development process. Although worker migration has long been accepted as a means of economic salvation for families in the Philippine labor culture, during the COVID-19 crisis, it was viewed as a significant factor and controlling it appeared to be a viable solution to keeping an adequate number of healthcare workers in the country. The deployment cap policy can be viewed as a decision to strike a balance between workforce availability and economic disruption.