Projecting Healthcare Workforce in the Context of EU’s Ageing Population: Challenges and Opportunities

Fabrizio Natale , European Commission - Joint Research Centre
Astrid Nedee, European Commission Joint Research Centre
Rossella Icardi, Joint Research Centre
Alba Bernini, European Commission Joint Research Centre

The ageing of the European population has a significant impact on the EU’s healthcare demand. Yet, the supply of qualified professionals risks not to keep pace with these developments, given challenges in projecting supply and demand. This study proposes to compare bottlenecks in healthcare workforce supply among Member States until 2070 on the basis of the demographics of the health workforce itself and the evolution of demand driven by the utilisation of health services by age and sex. We project the evolution of the stock of doctors and nurses with a cohort model and considering inflows and outflows through graduations from medical schools and universities and through international migration and retirement. The model is based on WHO, OECD, Eurostat statistics, LFS and EHIS microdata and data from national statistical offices and medical associations. In terms of complexity and level of detail, our exercise falls between the global-level projections conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the healthcare workforce and education planning systems adopted by most Member States. In the model, we explore different potential scenarios: 1) stable EU health workforce; 2) stable ratio EU’s health workforce to total population; 3) stable ratio EU’s health workforce to total population by age and sex; 4) zero net migration. With scenario 3) we establish a link between supply and demand by weighting future population on the basis of current utilisation rates of medical services by age and sex.

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 Presented in Session 3. Ageing and its Consequences