We keep repeating it. We do not have enough people in healthcare.
But if you look a little more closely, you see something else.
In the Netherlands more than 1.5 million people now work in healthcare and social care. And yet the shortage will rise to more than 260,000 in the coming years.
That does not add up.
More people. More vacancies. More pressure.
Something striking has happened in recent years:
- The number of people in healthcare is growing
- The number of vacancies remains extremely high (±60,000)
- The workload keeps rising (42% in hospitals experience it as too high)
So even if we take on more people… the problem does not get any smaller.
In fact: we are making it bigger on two sides at once.
This is not an intake problem
If extra people do not lead to less pressure, then the problem lies somewhere else.
Not in:
- recruitment
- recruitment marketing
- campaigns
But in something more fundamental:
👉 how we organise the work
We still organise work as if it were 1995
Healthcare is built around jobs:
- nurse
- doctor
- care assistant
- specialist
But the work stopped consisting of jobs a long time ago. The work consists of tasks .
Tasks that:
- overlap
- shift
- are partly medical
- partly administrative
- partly human
And still we keep putting everything into fixed roles.
The result:
- some people are drowning in work
- while other capacity goes unused
The system has reached its limit
You see it everywhere:
- vacancies are growing less fast
- but workload keeps rising
- and capacity is being cut back
Beds are closing. Waiting times are getting longer. Care is being postponed.
Not because we do not want to solve it. But because the system can no longer cope.
👉 We are not seeing a solution 👉 We are seeing saturation
The real question is not: how do we get more people?
The real question is:
How do we distribute the work differently?
How do we distribute the work differently?
That means:
- from job-based to task-based organising
- from diplomas to skills and potential
- from looking for people to redesigning work
And yes, that also means:
👉 using AI to distribute work differently 👉 making visible where capacity sits 👉 and where it is being lost right now
This is not an HR question
This is where it gets interesting.
Because this is not something HR can solve on its own.
This touches on:
- how teams are set up
- how care processes run
- who carries which responsibility
- how technology is used
👉 This is a question for the board
If you change nothing, you lose on three fronts
- capacity (you can deliver less care)
- quality (pressure leads to mistakes)
- costs (sickness absence and agency hire explode)
So the question is not whether you have to tackle this.
The question is:
Who takes the lead here?
Who takes the lead here?
I would like to take you through this
On Wednesday 15 April at 10:00 I will be on the mainstage of Zorg & ICT 2026, the Dutch healthcare technology fair.
In my opening keynote I will take you through:
- why the staff shortage is an organisational problem
- what task-based organising looks like in practice
- what the role of AI is in this
- and what you can do differently tomorrow
Not an abstract story. But how you can apply this in your own organisation.
See you there?
If you are working on the future of healthcare… this is going to affect you.
📍 Wednesday 15 April 🕙 10:00 📌 Tech Mainstage Zorg & ICT
I will see you there.