The Risk of the Outflow of Doctors and IT/ICT ... - Outlook Web App

increasing at the same tempo. The average annual increase in the number of registered doctors
in this period is 338 people.
The total number of dentists has been increasing at an average rate of 1% annually since
1998. It has been shown that this rate of growth is insufficient and results in the aging of the
entire basic group.
Roughly 50% of the doctors provide primarily outpatient care (general practitioners for adults,
children and youth, gynaecologists and dentists), others work as outpatient specialists (50% at
inpatient facilities, 50% in independent outpatient facilities, primarily surgeries).
The analysis of the age cohorts of doctors shows that up to 2002 there were decreases in age
cohorts, and thus departures of doctors from records. They apparently left to other jobs or to
other countries. It turns out the both male and female doctors behaved similarly.
Since 2003 doctors appeared in some cohorts that were not there five years ago, and more
doctors are applying to the registries in these cohorts than they are decreasing from them. The
main source of increases in middle and higher age cohorts are evidently foreign doctors,
around three hundred of which are increasing in the records each year. We do not know their
age structure, and so we cannot assign them to the age cohorts. The increases can also be
made up of doctors that worked outside of the sector, or that returned from abroad.
The source of the increases in the first two age cohorts are mainly graduates of medical
faculties, domestic students and foreign students.
Decreases in the higher age categories are caused by doctors entering retirement, women
earlier than men. Male doctors are newly getting into the records after 65 years of age.
An influx of foreign doctors is flowing into the Czech healthcare system. Their number is
increasing. It reached a growth rate of 22.5% between 2003 and 2006 and the increase
amounted to 695 doctors in absolute terms between these years, an average of 232 people
annually. A great majority of the doctors are from Slovakia.
The numbers of medical faculty graduates from the year 2000 ranges between 716 and 874
people. If we consider that the decrease from the oldest cohorts 55 years of age and older
together with the entire cohort of 70-year-olds and older amounts to almost 400 people
annually in the last 5 years, the graduates can easily replace them.
The number of dentistry graduates has stabilised around 117 people, which soon causes
other decreases of the total number of dentists if we consider that the average annual decrease
in the last 3 years for those 55 years old and older amounted to 187 people and is continually
increasing with regard to the age structure of dentists.
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