White paper on how to solve Europe's health workforce crisis
In a new white paper, we call on all EU Member States to move away from international competition for health workers, and instead take united action to enable health workers across Europe to deliver high-quality healthcare to all EU citizens.
We recommend that all EU Member States take united action to enable health workers across Europe to deliver high-quality healthcare to all EU citizens, by:
- investing in robust, attractive health systems by e.g. increasing the education and training of health workers, health worker retention and recruitment efforts.
- disseminating existing examples of how Member States can use EU funding sources to boost health systems performance and provide more attractive working conditions for the scarce health and care workers.
- having incoming Members of European Parliament use the upcoming 2025 revision of the European Pillars of Social Rights Action Plan to develop and start monitoring health workforce targets indicators and equitable access to health services.
- making it mandatory for Member States (through the European Semester process) to publicly report on health workforce shortages and data on e.g. recruitment of doctors and nurses from abroad.
- having policy makers involved in the European Health Data Space (EHDS) make an effort to expand the EHDS’s remit, to include standardized data indicators for health worker mobility, and to ensure regular reporting and integration of data from various sources.
- having EU duty bearers, institutions and dialogues ensure that more non-state actors are given a voice in debates about Europe’s health workforce crisis and the solutions to this problem.