Evolución de la oferta de médicos. Chile 1993-2008 / Evolution of the availability of physicians in Chile

ABSTRACT

There is a significant increase in the physician availability in Chile in the last 15 years, due to the immigration of foreign physicians, but mainly due to the increasing number of graduates from private universities with medical schools. In the last four years, the number of physicians increased from 25.542 to 29.996 and the number of graduates, from 918 to 1.136. These figures show a nearly exponential growth. The number of physicians/number of beneficiaries' ratio increased from 1/630 to 1/569 in the last four years, due to the greater increase in the number of physicians than in the number of inhabitants. The future will show a similar trend in this ratio. The specialist/general practitioner ratio remains practically the same, as the number of physicians/beneficiaries ratio in the public system. The oversupply of physicians should alert authorities about the inconvenience in creating new medical schools and a careful plan of relationship between the offer and demand of medical services.