Is there a doctor in the house? Availability of Israeli physicians to the workforce.

Background: Israeli policymakers have expressed serious concerns about being able to meet the growing demand for physician services. For this reason, the Israel Ministry of Health (MoH) undertook studies based on 2008 and then 2012 data to obtain an accurate assessment of the size, specialty mix, demographic and geographic composition of the physician workforce. This paper highlights the findings from these studies about the number and percentage of licensed physicians in Israel who were not available, were only partially available, or were about to leave the Israeli healthcare workforce.