Primary health care in jeopardy? Model scenarios for the future development of primary health care physicians in the Czech Republic
Abstract
Although there have been relatively stable numbers of physicians in each branch of primary health care in recent years, there are no indications that in the coming years the Czech Republic will face a relatively high threat of significant loss of physicians. The reason is the irregular age structure of physicians - in many branches of activity the proportion of physicians aged 50-60 years exceeds the threshold for more than 40 %.
It is clear that the retirement leave of these physicians can assume considerable problems because the current low numbers of new doctors entering the system cannot replace this brawn drain adequately. The greatest problems can be expected in branches of the practical medicine for children and youth and general practical medicine, which have the most regressive type of age structure.
The paper introduces two model projections of possible future developments, which contrast the hypothesis of abidance in current average number of new entrants into the field of activity and the hypothesis of continuous increase of new entrants. It will be shown that despite considerable increases in the number of new physicians, the process of demographic aging of physicians in primary health care cannot be averted and the necessary generational change of doctors will be going through considerable troubles.