It is not the law on minimum salaries that is plunging hospital budgets, according to the OZZL Residents' Agreement, which, on the basis of responses given by several hundred hospitals of various levels, calculated that salaries account for an average of 55 percent of the facilities' expenses. - Information that it is 80 percent or even more is simply untrue, the young doctors believe.
How much do these terrible doctors cost?
Published June 25, 2025 06:42
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On Wednesday, the Health Ministry will present - a few days before the increases go into effect - the AOTMiT's recommendations on the increase in valuations of services, and will announce the amount that will flow to health care providers as a result of the need to increase wages. In the afternoon, meanwhile, the Trilateral Team's presidium is scheduled to begin discussing the future of the wage law. In the morning, on the other hand, county hospital directors will meet with unions to discuss a joint protest if there is less money for raises than required by the maximum option implemented in previous years. The same directors, however, want far-reaching changes to the law, including cancelling it or freezing the raises. They believe that because the law does not guarantee additional funding for the raises, they are "eating up" medical expenditures. A large number of politicians - including the prime minister - echo this narrative, so the residents decided to see how it is.
- There is a narrative in the media that up to 80 percent of hospital budgets are spent on medical staff salaries. Non-healthcare professionals could therefore be under the impression that the majority of hospitals' money is consumed by staff salaries, and if staff, then of course doctors. This is used as an argument to freeze the valorization of salaries in the health care system," Sebastian Goncerz, chairman of the OZZL Residents' Agreement, said at a press conference on Tuesday.
The organization sent an inquiry to more than five hundred hospitals in Poland regarding their budgets and what percentage of funds is spent on salaries, including those of contracted physicians, as well as residents. Responses have so far been provided by 321 establishments.
As it turned out, the data collected by PR showed that on average hospitals spend about 55 percent of their funds on medical staff salaries, although there were large deviations. At one extreme were hospitals spending between 10 and 20 percent of their budgets on salaries (institutes). The larger and more specialized the hospitals, the smaller the share of salaries in their budgets, in general - apart from the extremes in the case of highly specialized hospitals, the norm is a range of 30-40 percent. County hospitals spend the most on salaries, but among all hospitals that responded to residents, only a little over 2 percent allocate more than 80 percent of their budgets for this purpose. 31 of 321 hospitals spend 70-80 percent of their budgets on salaries.
- And how much do those dreaded doctors cost? Our group's salaries account for an average of 23 percent of hospitals' budgets, while doctors' salaries account for 42 percent of the total funds allocated to medical staff salaries. And how much do full-time doctors cost? On average, 8 percent of the hospitals' budget is spent on their salaries," Sebastian Goncerz pointed out. Added to this is the money given to hospitals for residents' salaries (less than 2 percent of the budgets of all hospitals, although not all of them have residents).
As the residents stressed, the purpose of the minimum wage law was to ensure decent wages for those who choose to work full time. That's why trade unions, including the PR of the OZZL, don't want to hear about such changes to the law, which would lead, for example, to a freeze on raises.
