Greece’s Healthcare and Health Workforce: Challenges, Innovations, and the Way Forward
Authors: Dr Kalliopi Panagiotopoulou, Director of Research and Education, Agency for Quality Assurance in Health, S.A., Dr. Konstantakopoulou Olympia, Teaching Staff / Research Fellow/Center for Health Services Management and Evaluation NKUA
Greece is at a pivotal moment in redefining its health workforce strategies. As health systems across Europe face increasing pressures, Greece is working to strengthen planning mechanisms, improve workforce resilience, and ensure equitable access to care.
The current landscape
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and an ongoing economic recovery, Greece’s National Health System (ESY) continues to provide universal healthcare coverage. However, it is grappling with health workforce shortages, particularly in rural and island areas; an aging health workforce, with many nurses and physicians nearing retirement; uneven distribution of professionals, leading to access and equity issues; and high emigration rates of health professionals, driven by better employment conditions abroad. Despite these challenges, Greece has made strides in health digitization and workforce education, supported by EU funding, WHO Athens Office, and national reforms.
Key challenges facing the health workforce
Attracting young professionals to the public sector remains difficult due to low wages, contract insecurity, and workload stress, while the well-being of nurses and physicians remains a critical issue, exacerbated by understaffing and long shifts. In addition, there is a need for upskilling and reskilling, particularly in digital health and integrated care, and limited investment in clinical leadership and health workforce planning restricts long-term system adaptability.
Initiatives and innovative approaches
A major development for HWF planning is the HEALTH-IQ project, a collaboration between the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) Athens Office. The HEALTH-IQ project is an initiative focusing, among other goals, on implementing a measurement and reporting system for key indicators related to Health Resources in Health (HRH) and Quality of Care (QoC). It represents a strategic shift toward data-driven policy and accountability, helping decision-makers monitor how workforce capacity directly affects care delivery. HEALTH-IQ complements broader goals under the JA HEROES project, aiming to provide Greece with robust tools to link workforce planning with service quality outcomes.
Greece is not standing still. Several national, WHO and EU-funded initiatives are targeting overall transformation. Strategic planning tools piloted through the JA HEROES project aim to help regional planners simulate future staffing scenarios and make evidence-based decisions. Also, digital upskilling programs are underway for healthcare workers, including telemedicine and electronic health records training. At the moment, efforts are being made to empower advanced nursing roles and integrate them into primary care teams and a Train the trainer (ToT) program, an initiative to enhance management capacities in health services, is being concluded with the support of The WHO Athens Office, AQAH S.A. and the Ministry of Health. Finally, Greece, through the JA HEROES project, has joined a broader European conversation on sustainable health workforce policies and brings valuable insights from best practices across the project consortium countries, participating actively in comparative studies, tool development, and pilot implementations.
The way forward
Greece is expected to finalize its national roadmap for health workforce planning in 2025, to expand initiatives to address rural health access and strengthen nurse-led models of care, especially in chronic disease management, in the medium term, and to continue collaborations with academic institutions for evidence-based policy development in the long run.