Enhancing Patient Experience and Trust in Interactions with the Health System

Poland is aging. In another three decades, more than half of the country's population will be over50.7 years old, 10.4 years more than the current median age of 40.3 years. The share ofindividuals 65 years and older will rise to 33 percent, up from 17 percent today. The mostsubstantial relative change in the share will take place in the oldest-old age group (80 ), whichwill triple. Poland records one death every 1 minute and one birth every 2 minutes, and withfewer children being born every year, the country's population will eventually shrink to 34.4million by 2050, 4 million lesser than the current level of 38.4 million. Poland is not alone in this respect: in recent decades, the combination of low fertility and longer life expectancy, among other factors, has led to an increased proportion of older people in all EU member states. Since 2000, fertility rates have slightly increased in several European countries, but they are expected to remain close to, or below, 2.1 children per woman, the rate needed for long-term replacement of the population (Kohler and Ortega 2003). Throughout Europe, mortality among older people has fallen substantially since the 1970s (Christensen et al. 2009), largely as a result of falling mortality from cardiovascular disease (Glei and Mesle 2010), which can be attributed to a combination of improved lifestyles, prevention, and treatment (Laatikainen 2005). Indeed, the fall in mortality among older people is now the main contributor to population aging, though other elements of population dynamics, such as migration and fluctuating birth rates, are also noteworthy in the discussion of aging populations.