The figures behind reports of doctors leaving Israel are coming into focus: A new Tel Aviv University study found that about 1,370 doctors spent at least a year outside Israel between 2023 and 2025, a 94% increase compared with the corresponding period a decade earlier.
According to the study, 416 doctors left Israel for at least a year in 2023, followed by 530 in 2024, while the number for 2025 was estimated at about 419. By comparison, only 705 doctors left the country between 2013 and 2015. The number who left over the past three years is roughly equivalent to the combined number of doctors employed at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, commonly known as Ichilov Hospital, and Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa.
The study was conducted by Prof. Itai Ater of Tel Aviv University's Coller School of Management, who also heads the Economists' Forum for Democracy; Prof. Nittai Bergman, head of the university's Eitan Berglas School of Economics; and Doron Zamir, a doctoral student at the Coller School of Management. The research was carried out under the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics' program providing researchers with access to official data, using cross-referenced information from the Population Registry, the education registry and the Health Ministry's database of medical licenses.
Concerns over doctors leaving Israel surfaced as early as the summer of 2023, before the outbreak of the war and against the backdrop of the government's judicial overhaul, when WhatsApp groups were formed for doctors interested in relocating abroad.
Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman Tov even convened a discussion on the issue and appealed to doctors, saying, "We don't have the privilege of giving up. We don't have another country or another health care system." Until the current study, however, the relevant authorities did not have official data on the scale of the phenomenon.
Nearly 9% of surgeons under 60 left
Many young doctors go abroad for fellowships or advanced training at leading medical centers. One of the more troubling findings in the study, however, was the growing proportion of older doctors leaving the country. Between 2023 and 2025, 281 doctors aged 45 and over spent at least a year outside Israel, accounting for about 20% of all those who left, or one in five. A decade earlier, that figure stood at just 14%, or about one in seven.
A breakdown by specialty found that 215 internal medicine physicians left over the past three years, representing 3.9% of all internists in Israel; 188 surgeons, or 6%; and 116 ophthalmologists, dermatologists and ear, nose and throat specialists, or 6.2%. Another 98 doctors in supporting specialties, including anesthesiology, radiology and pathology, left, accounting for 3.9% of physicians in those fields. They were joined by 94 pediatricians, or 6.2%; 81 family and community medicine physicians, or 2%; 72 gynecologists, or 4%; 51 psychiatrists, or 3.2%; and 39 intensive care and emergency medicine physicians, or 4.7%.
Among doctors under 60, the highest departure rate was recorded in ophthalmology, dermatology and ear, nose and throat medicine, where 9.4% of all doctors in that age group left. Surgeons followed at 8.8%, with pediatricians at 6.4%.
Tel Aviv tops list of departures
Geographically, the Tel Aviv District ranked first, with 429 doctors leaving between 2023 and 2025. They represented 5.4% of all doctors in the district and 7.4% of those under 60. The Central District recorded 290 departing doctors, followed by Haifa with 190, Jerusalem with 132 and the Southern District with 125.
The study also found that even after accounting for Israeli doctors who returned to the country, Israel suffered a net loss of 509 doctors in 2023 and 2024, an average of about 255 a year. That is nearly five times the annual average between 2010 and 2019, when the net loss averaged 54 doctors a year. According to the researchers, an increase in the emigration of experienced doctors could damage both the quality of medical care and the training of the next generation of physicians. The danger, they said, lies not only in the current number leaving but primarily in the possibility that the trend will continue or even intensify.
They therefore argue that the factors encouraging emigration must be addressed early and that conditions should be created to help retain Israel's vital medical human capital.
The researchers stressed, however, that a doctor spending a year outside Israel does not necessarily mean that he or she has left permanently. Many physicians spend extended periods abroad for fellowships, professional training or research, and some are expected to return.
Still, the sharp rise in the number of doctors spending long periods abroad is a cause for concern. Some do leave permanently, while for others a temporary move initially intended for training can ultimately become a decision to remain overseas. The fact that a larger proportion of those leaving in recent years are veteran and experienced doctors further heightens the concern, the researchers said, because such departures are less likely to be motivated by training needs.
Prof. Itai Ater, one of the study's authors, said: "Since 2023, the State of Israel has been losing its best people. We all have family members waiting for surgery or other medical treatment. The departure of nearly 1,400 doctors translates directly into longer waiting times, less effective medical care and, ultimately, serious harm to our quality of life. If, God forbid, this trend continues, there is growing concern about irreversible damage to Israel's resilience."
