Rapidly rising wages have significantly decreased the outflow of Estonian healthcare workers to Finland but have not solved the shortage completely, said Kaupo Koppel, an expert at the Foresight Center.
Speaking at the presentation of the Foresight Center’s report on the sustainability of healthcare on Wednesday, Koppel said healthcare expenditures have tripled over the past 15 years and doubled compared with 10 years ago.
More than 50 percent of this increase in costs has come from salary raises for healthcare workers.”This is not a bad thing in itself, we are coming from a relatively low level,” Koppel said.
Speaking on Vikerraadio’s “Uudis+” program, he explained that while doctors’ and nurses’ salaries used to be quite low, but Estonia has now reached a point where the average is in line with the EU average.
“This rather suggests that the rapid wage growth we’ve seen in recent years likely will not continue at the same pace,” Koppel noted.
Read more: ERR.EE
