Chapter 1 contains background information about the health system crisis, in order to provide context for the physician shortage. This chapter focuses on the hospitalization crisis, as manifested by the severe shortage of hospital beds - especially in the intensive care wards. In addition, the chapter examines the growing gaps within Israel’s health system. These gaps are evidenced by the increase in private healthcare costs (e.g. co-payments), which mainly affects the weaker population sectors.

Chapter 2 surveys current data and information about the physician shortage. After explaining the methodology used to collect the data, the chapter provides information about the shortage within the health system in general and within the hardest-hit specialties (e.g. anesthesiology, intensive care, internal medicine, pediatrics, neonatal intensive care, and others) in particular. The chapter also compares Israel’s physician shortage to shortages in the OECD countries.

Chapter 3 addresses the reasons for the physician shortage. Among other things, it presents data concerning the shortage of students and of medical training for the future generation, under-staffing of medical workforce, negative incentives for doctors in the form of inferior working conditions, the degree of appeal of the medicine profession, and the extent of abandonment of the profession by Israelis licensed to practice medicine who choose not to do so.

Chapter 4 describes the implications of the physician shortage. In this context, the chapter relates to the overcrowding in hospitals wards, the impairment of the quality of medical care, the violence perpetrated against doctors and medical personnel in hospitals and clinics, the inequity that exists particularly in the periphery, and the driving away of specialists from the profession.

Finally, Chapter 5 offers suggestions for dealing with the physician shortage, including the immediate allocation of staffing standards to specialties in crisis, and the establishment of a professional joint committee of doctors and employers to determine a policy for staffing standards.