Reinventing primary health care in the Greece of austerity: the role of health-care workers.

Abstract

The Greek primary health-care system (PHC) seems to be suffering the most from the economic crisis because of understaffing and misdistribution of the health workforce and the shortage of medical supplies and diagnostic equipment. Aims The objective of the paper is to present for the first time in public national health-care workforce census data for the first two years of the economic recession and the adopted bailout mechanism (2010 and 2011) (a) to evaluate the adequacy of the governmental effort in terms of organization and management of the health-care workforce in PHC; and (b) to identify constraints and opportunities for the development of an integrated PHC ensuring access to health-care services for all.