In 2025, the Netherlands is estimated to face a shortage of between 100,000 and 135,000 healthcare workers. This shortage is concentrated primarily in elderly care, disability care, and mental healthcare, where demand is growing faster than the available supply of staff. In this article, we answer the most frequently asked questions about the healthcare staffing shortage, its causes, expected developments, and the solutions that matter most.
How many healthcare workers is the Netherlands short of in 2025?
In 2025, the Netherlands is estimated to be short between 100,000 and 135,000 healthcare workers. This makes the healthcare sector one of the hardest-hit sectors in the Dutch labor market. The shortage is not evenly distributed: some regions and care segments face considerably greater challenges than others.
What makes the shortage particularly urgent is that it is not just about absolute numbers. Many healthcare organizations are structurally understaffed, leading to higher workloads for existing staff, increased sick leave, and ultimately greater turnover. This causes the shortage to feed itself. Healthcare workers who burn out are not replaced quickly enough, forcing their colleagues to work even harder.
At the same time, demand for care is growing by approximately 6% per year, driven by an aging population. The combination of a shrinking workforce and growing care demand makes this a structural, long-term problem.
Which healthcare sectors are facing the greatest staffing shortages?
Elderly care, disability care, and mental healthcare are facing the most severe staffing shortages in 2025. Within elderly care, nursing homes and residential care facilities are the hardest hit, followed by home care. Hospitals also face shortages but generally have more resources to attract staff.
The shortage is most acute in elderly care. Caregivers and nurses are difficult to find and even harder to retain. The combination of physically and emotionally demanding work, relatively lower salaries, and high workloads makes the sector less attractive to new entrants.
In mental healthcare, the shortage of psychiatric nurses and therapists has been a persistent problem for years. Waiting lists are growing, and institutions are sometimes forced to turn away patients or delay treatment. Home care is under pressure due to a combination of an aging population, the shift toward community-based care, and staff leaving for sectors with better working conditions.
What are the main causes of the healthcare staffing shortage?
The healthcare staffing shortage has multiple reinforcing causes. The three most significant are an aging workforce, high turnover due to workload, and insufficient inflow of new healthcare professionals. Together, they create a structural mismatch between supply and demand in the healthcare labor market.
- Aging workforce: A large proportion of current healthcare workers are approaching retirement age, while not enough young people are entering the field to replace them.
- High workload and turnover: Many healthcare workers leave the sector prematurely due to physical and mental strain, irregular working hours, and the feeling of not having enough time to provide quality care.
- Insufficient inflow: Healthcare training programs are not producing enough graduates to keep pace with growing demand. Moreover, graduates do not always choose to work in the most severely affected sectors.
- Part-time work: The Netherlands has one of the highest rates of part-time employment in the world. In healthcare, a large proportion of staff work under small part-time contracts, which limits the effective availability of care capacity.
- Growing care demand: Due to an aging population, the number of people requiring care increases every year, while the number of potential caregivers is declining relatively.
How will the healthcare staffing shortage develop through 2030?
The healthcare staffing shortage is expected to worsen further through 2030. Without structural intervention, the shortage of healthcare workers in the Netherlands could exceed 200,000. The demographic wave will reach its peak while the working-age population continues to shrink.
Forecasts from the Capaciteitsorgaan and other research bodies show that demand for care will continue to grow significantly through 2030, particularly in elderly care and chronic care. At the same time, large cohorts of experienced healthcare workers will be retiring, putting pressure on knowledge transfer and continuity of care.
Without intervention, this means healthcare organizations will increasingly be forced to make difficult decisions about who can and cannot be helped. This is an ethical and societal challenge that is already visible in growing waiting lists and overcrowded emergency departments. The urgency to act now is therefore considerable.
What solutions can help reduce the healthcare staffing shortage?
There are multiple approaches that can help reduce the healthcare staffing shortage. The most effective strategy combines improving working conditions, increasing inflow through training programs, reducing unnecessary administrative burdens, and deploying technology to relieve pressure on healthcare workers.
Better working conditions and higher retention
Many healthcare organizations are investing in improved scheduling, higher salaries, and greater autonomy for staff. Reducing administrative burdens gives healthcare professionals more time for direct patient care, which improves job satisfaction and retention. Programs that support staff in taking career steps within healthcare also help limit turnover.
Technology as support
Smart use of technology can relieve pressure on healthcare workers without reducing the quality of care. Digital monitoring, automated reporting, and AI-assisted surveillance make it possible to deliver high-quality care with fewer staff. This is not a replacement for human care, but an enhancement of it: workers are deployed where they are needed most.
How can AI help address the healthcare staffing shortage?
AI can help address the healthcare staffing shortage by taking over tasks that previously required continuous human presence, such as nighttime supervision and fall detection. This allows healthcare workers to focus their attention on tasks that genuinely require human involvement, increasing care capacity per worker without compromising safety or quality.
Concrete applications of AI in healthcare include automated client monitoring, early detection of health risks, and smart alerting. Instead of checking on a client every few hours, AI can monitor continuously and only alert staff when something actually requires attention. This not only saves time but also reduces unnecessary disruptions for both staff and clients.
A key advantage of AI monitoring is its accuracy. Older alarm systems generate many false alerts, leading to alarm fatigue and increased workload. Modern AI solutions are considerably more reliable, meaning staff only need to respond when it is truly necessary.
How Kepler Vision Technologies helps address the staffing shortage
At Kepler Vision Technologies, we develop AI software that helps healthcare organizations tackle the staffing shortage in concrete terms. Our solutions, Kepler Night Nurse and Kepler NurseAssist, monitor clients in elderly care facilities and patients in hospitals, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
- Fall detection and fall prevention: The software immediately detects when someone falls and alerts the right healthcare worker within seconds, so no one has to wait unnecessarily long for help.
- Only one false alarm every 92 days: Our AI is 1,000 times more accurate than outdated alarm systems, dramatically reducing alarm fatigue and lowering workload.
- Privacy by design: Images are never viewed by humans. A healthcare worker only enters a client’s room when the software requests it, protecting client privacy.
- Plug-and-play installation: Our software is easy to plan, configure, and install, without requiring major changes to existing infrastructure.
- Internationally certified: We comply with ISO 27001 and NEN 7510, the gold standard for information security in healthcare.
Want to find out how our AI solutions can help your healthcare organization address the staffing shortage? Get in touch and discover what Kepler can do for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is AI monitoring in healthcare suitable for all types of care organizations, or only large institutions?
AI monitoring solutions such as those from Kepler Vision are suitable for both large nursing homes and smaller residential care facilities and home care organizations. The plug-and-play installation makes implementation straightforward, regardless of the size of the organization. It is advisable to first identify which specific challenges in your organization are greatest — such as nighttime supervision or fall risk — so that the technology can be deployed where it will have the greatest impact.
How do I get my healthcare staff to be open to AI technology in the workplace?
Resistance to new technology in healthcare often stems from fear of job loss or a loss of human connection with clients. It is important to involve staff early in the implementation process and communicate clearly that AI is intended as support, not replacement. Show staff how the technology concretely reduces their workload — for example, by eliminating unnecessary nighttime rounds — and involve them in the evaluation so they feel a sense of ownership over the new way of working.
What are the privacy risks of camera-based AI monitoring for clients, and how are they managed?
Camera-based monitoring legitimately raises privacy concerns, especially in a client’s bedroom or bathroom. Modern systems such as Kepler Night Nurse operate according to the principle of privacy by design: images are not stored or viewed by humans, and the AI only sends an alert when there is a concrete reason to do so. Healthcare organizations must also always obtain informed consent from clients and their representatives, and document the use of monitoring technology in the care plan.
What concrete steps can a healthcare organization take right now to address the staffing shortage, beyond deploying technology?
Beyond technology, there are immediate measures healthcare organizations can take themselves: expanding contracted hours for staff who want to work more, actively reducing administrative tasks through better software tools, and investing in career guidance to limit turnover. Partnering with regional healthcare training programs for internships and career-change programs is also a proven effective way to increase inflow in the shorter term. A combination of retention, recruitment, and technology delivers the greatest impact.
How does the Dutch healthcare staffing shortage compare to other European countries?
The Netherlands is not alone: virtually all Western European countries face similar shortages in healthcare, driven by the same factors of aging populations and shrinking workforces. Countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom are actively recruiting healthcare staff from outside the EU, which provides short-term relief but also raises ethical questions about brain drain in source countries. Compared internationally, the Netherlands lags relatively behind in terms of full-time employment participation in healthcare, meaning there is still considerable untapped potential domestically.
How do I know whether an AI monitoring solution complies with Dutch healthcare regulations?
When selecting an AI monitoring solution, it is essential to verify that the provider complies with NEN 7510 (information security in healthcare) and ISO 27001, and that the solution is GDPR-compliant. Ask the vendor explicitly about the data processing agreement, the location of data storage, and how incidents are handled. Healthcare organizations are also advised to involve their own Data Protection Officer (DPO) in the implementation of new monitoring technology.
What are the most common mistakes healthcare organizations make when addressing staffing shortages?
A common mistake is focusing exclusively on recruiting new staff while the turnover of existing employees remains persistently high. Investing in retention — through better scheduling, reduced workload, and greater autonomy — often has more impact than recruitment campaigns. Another frequent mistake is implementing technology without staff buy-in, resulting in tools being underutilized. Finally, organizations regularly underestimate the impact of administrative burdens: reducing them directly increases care capacity without requiring additional staff.