No. 982 - Healthcare workforce needs in Italy. Challenges of generational turnover and the impact of NRRP interventions

Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional papers)
by Luciana Aimone Gigio, Demetrio Alampi, Enza Maltese, Daniele Marangoni, Massimiliano Paolicelli, Elena Sceresini, Miriam Tagliavia and Giovanni Vittorino
December 2025
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The work describes the staffing levels of healthcare personnel working within the Italian public health service (Servizio sanitario nazionale, SSN) and in private facilities across different regions of the country. It provides an assessment of SSN workforce requirements arising both from natural staff turnover and from the activation of facilities envisaged under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP). Furthermore, it highlights how past decisions regarding healthcare workforce training have contributed to the current challenges in ensuring adequate staff replacement.

Healthcare personnel have a relatively high average age and are unevenly distributed across the country. By 2032, more than 40 per cent of general practitioners and approximately 9 per cent of nurses and one quarter of physicians active within the SSN at end-2022 will retire and need to be replaced. In addition, workforce planning must account for the demand generated by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), which will particularly affect nurses and healthcare assistants. The need for new healthcare staff is met with the challenge of insufficient supply.

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  1. 17 December 2025
    No. 982 - Healthcare workforce needs in Italy. Challenges of generational turnover and the impact of NRRP interventions
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    (only in Italian)

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