Spanish Health System Overview
Health System Rankings
Health System Outcomes
Health System Coverage
Costs for Consumers
Health System Expenditures
Spanish COVID-19 Policy
Density of medical doctors (per 10,000 population) (2010-2018): 38.7
Density of nursing and midwifery personnel (per 10,000 population) (2010-2018): 57.3
Density of dentists (per 10,000 population) (2010-2019): 7.9
Density of pharmacists (per 10,000 population) (2010-2018): 11.5
Source: World health statistics 2020: monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development goals. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
Remuneration of Doctors, Ratio to Average Wage (2017)
General Practitioners: 2.1
Specialists: 2.4
Source: OECD (2019), Health at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4dd50c09-en.
Remuneration of Hospital Nurses, Ratio to Average Wage (2017): 1.3
Remuneration of Hospital Nurses, USD PPP (2017): $56,300
Source: OECD (2019), Health at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4dd50c09-en.
“The number of doctors and nurses in Spain has increased in recent years, both in absolute numbers and relative to the population size. As shown in Figure 8, the number of doctors per 1 000 population is slightly higher than the EU average (3.9 versus 3.6 in 2017). The proportion of nurses is well below the EU average (5.7 per 1 000 population versus 8.5), as the number of nurses in Spain does not include nurse assistants although they perform similar tasks to many nurses elsewhere in Europe. There are reports of increasing shortages of nurses, and the growing use of temporary and part-time contracts also results in large turnover (European Commission, 2019a). Overall in the SNS, 30 % of all employees were on temporary contracts in 2017, up from 27 % in 2012 (Sanidad CCOO, 2017). The Ministry of Finance signed an agreement with the unions in March 2017 to reduce temporary employment contracts below 8 % to increase job stability in the health sector.”
Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2019), Spain: Country Health Profile 2019, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.
“New legislation adopted in 2018 expanded the role of nurses with the required qualifications to allow them to prescribe medicines and vaccinations included in the official vaccination calendar, with a view to improving access to care for the population and enhancing the career prospects of nurses. The new law also clarified the accreditation requirements for nurses to be able to perform these more advanced roles.”
Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2019), Spain: Country Health Profile 2019, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.
“Beyond financial barriers, access to care may also be restricted because of limited availability of health care professionals. There are growing concerns about shortages of doctors in the near future, as more than one-third of doctors in Spain in 2017 were aged over 55 and can therefore be expected to retire in the coming years. These concerns are not new and led to a substantial increase in the number of students admitted to medical schools between 2006 and 2010. However, after the economic crisis, the Ministry of Health, Consumption and Social Welfare called for a reduction in the number of students admitted to medical schools in 2012, following the results of a medical workforce planning exercise that projected some surpluses of doctors. These projection results reflected the reality at that time that a growing number of newly trained doctors were unemployed or migrating to other countries. However, in recent years, the main concerns have reverted to shortages.”
Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2019), Spain: Country Health Profile 2019, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.
“According to the latest figures, the primary health care workforce has remained stable since 2010. Regarding primary health care physicians and nurses, figures in 2014 slightly exceeded those in 2010 – from 75 to 76 physicians per 100,000 assigned insurees and from 62 to 65 staff nurses per 100,000 assigned insurees. The same observation is applicable to other specialist physicians working in hospitals and outpatient specialized settings; specialist physicians have increased from 176 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010 to 189 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2014. In turn, staff nurses working in hospitals and specialized outpatient premises have remained stable at 320 staff nurses per 100,000 inhabitants (MSSSI, 2017b).”
Source: Bernal-Delgado E, García-Armesto S, Oliva J, Sánchez Martínez FI, Repullo JR, PeñaLongobardo LM, Ridao-López M, Hernández-Quevedo C. Spain: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2018;20(2):1–179.
“The most recent data on the mobility of health workers reflects the situation in 2011. At that time, 9.4% (of the 207,042 doctors) had been trained in foreign countries, most of them in Latin America, Germany and Italy. With regard to nurses, 2.1% (of 250,277) had been trained abroad, basically, Latin America, Portugal and Romania (OECD, 2017c).
“In the aftermath of the economic crisis, the budgetary and personnel reduction policies translated into an increasing outflow of doctors and nurses seeking employment abroad. The SNS [National Health Service] as a single employer was not able to absorb the number of health workers trained in the country, and the rate of unemployment rose in the health sector. As indirect evidence from the Medical Council, the number of physicians requesting a “competence certificate”, which is required to work in other EU countries, has increased up to 2016: 1,380 physicians in 2011; 2,405 in 2012, 3,279 in 2013; 3,300 in 2014; 2,917 in 2015 and 3,500 in 2016 (Medical Council Organization, 2017). However, many doctors ask for their competence certificate but do not then move so the exact number of migrant physicians is unknown. As countries of destination, physicians looked for employment in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland and Belgium (Medical Council Organization, 2017). Similar behaviour was observed in the case of nurses; between 2010 and 2013, 4,580 nurses requested their “competence certificate” from the Ministry of Education; in 2014, 8,000 nurses were working abroad. In this case, main destinations were the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Portugal and Belgium (Galbany-Estragués & Nelson, 2016).”
Source: Bernal-Delgado E, García-Armesto S, Oliva J, Sánchez Martínez FI, Repullo JR, PeñaLongobardo LM, Ridao-López M, Hernández-Quevedo C. Spain: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2018;20(2):1–179.
Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems in the US and several other nations.
Page last updated May 12, 2021 by Doug McVay, Editor.
