Israeli doctors appear to be leaving the country, creating a shortage in the health system, which leads to fierce competition and insufficient staffing in the country’s periphery, according to a report published by State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman on Tuesday.
According to the report, in 2020, the number of doctors in Israel was 3.3 per 1,000 people, slightly below the OECD average of 3.7 per 1,000 people.
The comptroller warned that the shortage of doctors in certain specialties creates fierce competition for each doctor. This leads to medical centers with more resources hiring doctors at the expense of weaker and peripheral centers, longer wait times, closed services in peripheral areas, and soaring prices for private medical care.
According to the audit report, this issue is already evident in the mental health field. Given the existing and projected shortage of doctors in Israel, the situation will also worsen in other medical specialties.
The Health Ministry has a model for predicting the number of doctors per 1,000 people and has developed a detailed plan to increase the number of medical students in Israel. However, unlike countries such as the US, England, Canada, France, Australia, and Belgium, Israel’s Health Ministry lacks a professional mechanism for strategic planning of allotting medical personnel. This mechanism would allow for the formulation of a multi-year plan tailored to the population’s needs.
Additionally, the ministry has not conducted an accurate assessment of the current situation. Specifically, it has not mapped data regarding specialist doctors in each field and their shortages, nor has it assessed future needs for doctors based on specialty and geographic distribution.
The audit also revealed that the Health Ministry does not have complete data on thousands of doctors residing abroad. The ministry estimated that in 2022, about 3,700 doctors were abroad. They lack information on the duration of their stay, who moved abroad and returned, and their expected return date. There is no organized system or plan for their return.
According to data from the Civil Service Commission and the Health Ministry, there is a shortage of doctors in specialties including geriatrics, pediatric neurology, anesthesia, intensive care, general surgery, pediatric surgery, internal medicine, oncology, emergency medicine, pathology, radiology, rehabilitation, neurology, forensic medicine, and psychiatry.
Issues were raised in the past
For example, in 2022, the committee for examining the profession of neurology in hospitals and the community recommended increasing the number of neurologists by about 300 specialists to meet the population’s needs. In psychiatry, the shortage was estimated at about 280 doctors in 2019 (in hospitals and the community).
Englman noted that the need for psychiatric doctors and their shortage in the public service is particularly evident in light of the ongoing war with Hamas, which has implications for the mental health and resilience of the entire population of Israel.
According to the Health Ministry’s forecast for the number of doctors in the coming years (which did not include an increase in the number of medical students), by 2035, the shortage of doctors will grow, reducing the number of doctors to 3.02 per 1,000 people, lower than the 3.3 rate in 2020.