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OUT-MIGRATION AND ATTRITION OF PHYSICIANS AND DENTISTS BEFORE AND | 49340

Primary Health Care: Open Access

ISSN - 2167-1079

OUT-MIGRATION AND ATTRITION OF PHYSICIANS AND DENTISTS BEFORE AND AFTER EU ACCESSION (2003 AND 2011). THE CASE OF HUNGARY

2nd World Congress on Health Economics Policy & Outcomes Research

June 29-30, 2017|Madrid, Spain

Julia Varga

Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Prim Health Care

Abstract :

The migration of physicians from countries is the object of increasing attention in many European countries because of its impact on shortages of medical doctors; European countries are facing health workforce shortages. EU accession amplified fears in the Central and Eastern European new member states that accession may facilitate the movement of physicians from these countries to other parts of the Union, so out-migration could intensify shortages of doctors in these countries. This research employed a large-scale, individual-level, panel dataset to analyse the effect of EU accession on the probability of out-migration on the part of Hungarian physicians and dentists between 2003 and 2011. The data allowed us to follow outmigration, attrition and other employment status changes of Hungarian medical doctors at the individual level on a monthly basis. This study may supplement previous research as it analyzed actual changes in out-migration and employment status of medical doctors. In addition, our sample also made the observation of the return migration of physicians during the observation period possible. The paper further provides estimations on how the probability of return migration has changed. We used event history modelling and competing risk models. The results show that EU accession did not at the time affect the probability of out-migration while after the end of the transitional period of restrictions on the free movement of labour from the new EU member states to Austria and Germany, the probability of doctors� migration increased considerably. Relative wages and peer pressure also exercise a significant role in the out-migration decisions of young medical doctors. We also find that more than half of those medical doctors who left the country during the observation period returned some time later. The results furthermore suggest a massive flow of doctors to domestic jobs outside the health care system.

Biography :

Julia Varga has been a Senior Research fellow at the Institute of Economics CERS, a part of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, since 2006. Her research field covers Labour Economics. She was awarded her PhD degree in Economics in 1996. Between 1986 and 2006 she worked at Budapest Corvinus University, becoming an associate professor. Based on a large-scale, individual-level, panel dataset her paper - which was published in the European Journal of Health Economics - used event history modelling and competing risk models to analyse the effect of EU accession on the probability of out-migration on the part of Hungarian physicians and dentists between 2003 and 2011.

Email: varga.julia@krtk.mta.hu

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