Brno, Nov 12 (CTK) – The average age of Czech doctors has been growing and a “demographic bomb” has consequently been ticking in the country’s health sector, Ladislav Dusek, director of the Institute of Health Information and Statistics (UZIS), said at a congress of the Czech Doctors’ Chamber (CLK) last weekend.
He recommended that the number of medicine students be raised by 20 percent, otherwise the sector would be short of young doctors to replace the departing generation.
If nothing changed by then, about one fifth of Czech doctors will be over 65 as of 2025, according to the data presented by Dusek.
Other speakers at the CLK congress, too, voiced apprehensions in connection with doctors’ ageing. They said the state is doing nothing to solve the problem.
Zorjan Jojko, head of the out-patient specialists’ association, said the country will be short of 1,180 doctors, including 800 out-patient specialists, in 2020.
In fact the situation might get even worse, since the above estimate does not encompass the effect of the compulsory e-prescriptions system, valid as of January 1, 2018, and other current changes in the healthcare sector, Jojko said.
CLK President Milan Kubek said dozens of elderly doctors will retire in reaction to the new e-prescription duty. Otherwise they would have continued working for several more years, but they would not want to switch to the new system any more, Kubek said.
Another problem is the density of doctors and surgeries in various parts of the Czech Republic.
The highest number of doctors per 1,000 inhabitants is in Prague and the South Moravia Region, the lowest is in the regions Central Bohemia, Usti, Zlin and Vysocina.
