Close to 1,400 doctors left Israel for at least a year between 2023 and 2025, a 94 percent increase over the equivalent period a decade earlier, according to a Tel Aviv University study published Sunday.
The research, by Prof. Itai Ater of the Coller School of Management, Prof. Nittai Bergman, head of the Berglas School of Economics, and doctoral researcher Doron Zamir, counted about 1,370 departures across the three years, compared with 705 between 2013 and 2015. More than 400 doctors left in 2023, followed by a record 530 in 2024, with a preliminary estimate of roughly 420 for 2025.
The more telling figure is the net one. After accounting for physicians who came back, Israel lost 509 doctors in 2023 and 2024 alone, an average of about 255 a year. Between 2010 and 2019 the average annual net loss was 54. Fewer doctors are returning, and the rate of loss is now close to five times what it was.
To put the scale in local terms, the departures over three years exceed the entire medical staff of a large Israeli hospital. Shaare Zedek employs roughly 1,000 doctors, Soroka about 900 and Shamir about 630.
No part of the country was spared. The Tel Aviv district recorded the largest number of departures at 429 over the three years, equal to 5.4 percent of all physicians in the district and 7.4 percent of those under 60. Family and community medicine lost 81 doctors, obstetrics and gynecology 72, psychiatry 51, and intensive care and emergency medicine 39.
The researchers were careful about what the numbers do and do not show. Leaving for a year is not the same as leaving for good, and many physicians spend extended periods abroad on fellowships, research programs or advanced training. But a growing share of those going are veteran doctors, which is harder to explain as training, and some temporary moves become permanent ones.
"Since 2023, the State of Israel has been losing its best people," Ater said, warning that the departures translate into longer waits for surgery and treatment.
Their central concern is not the current count but the trajectory. If the trend holds or accelerates, they argue, it will erode both the quality of care and the training of the next generation of Israeli physicians, and the conditions pushing doctors out need to be addressed before that happens.
