The International Migration of Romanian Physicians

, Abstract. The brain drain in the health sector attracted the interest of researchers during the last 20 years after the fall of the communist regime. In Romania this phenomenon didn’t represent a matter of concern until the accession to the EU, but nowadays the number of physicians going to work abroad increased substantially at the same time with the decrease of the number of practicing physicians. Therefore the effects of this phenomenon on the Romanian population health are even more dramatic. The main objective of this paper is to identify the main factors attracting Romanian physicians to emigrate in other EU countries. Regression analysis for panel data is used in order to identify the destination country effect and the significance of pull factors. The most important factors influencing physician’s emigration are: proportion of population with higher education, levels of unemployment among young people, health expenditure per capita in the destination countries compared to origin countries.