"It's not a cost, it's an investment": OZZL calls for three national averages for specialists

The three national averages, at the moment, are PLN 24,545 gross per month, or, as OZZL points out, PLN 94 net per hour of work. As of July 1, according to the law on minimum salaries, a specialist doctor cannot earn less than PLN 11,862.49 gross. - Many politicians are spreading information that doctors earn one hundred, two hundred, three hundred thousand zlotys each. We as OZZL do not refer to this, but to the amounts that a specialist doctor earns on a contract of employment. These are people who have completed six years of studies and several years of specialization. We postulate three national averages for a doctor with such experience. This may rise to a very high amount, but it's actually less than PLN 100 per hour for their work. It's not a burden, it's an investment in the health of Polish women and men," said Joachim Budny of the OZZL national board.

As Grazyna Cebula-Kubat, chairwoman of the OZZL, said, at the moment there are about 23,500 specialists working full-time in the public system, slightly more than one-fifth of all doctors with a specialty. The rest are employed on contracts. The head of OZZL stressed that it is the "full-time doctors" who ensure the stability of the work of public entities. - If hospitals are left without doctors, there will be department closures," she said. Keeping specialists' salaries low, meanwhile, will push them both to the private sector and to other segments of the public sector, to OPD and AOS, where hourly rates are higher and there is no need for on-call.

Doctors, asked at the conference about the head of government's Wednesday statement on health outlays and salaries (Donald Tusk announced the preparation of solutions that would make the lion's share of the increase in health care funding, or PLN 25 billion, go to treatment rather than salaries), said the prime minister does not know how much a doctor really earns on a public employment contract.

Joachim Budny stressed that in health care financing one cannot think: either money for treatment or for salaries, because medical procedures are performed by doctors and money for treatment in a huge part is and must be spent on the work of medical personnel. - I strongly oppose building some absurd dichotomy between money for treatment and money for salaries of professionals. Money for treatment is money to have professionals working in hospitals," Budny said.

According to calculations by the National Association of Employers of County Hospitals, hospitals will need PLN 8.5-9 billion, or about PLN 18 billion a year, to implement raises for full-time and contract employees in the second half of the year. The Health Ministry has still not given either the variants of the recommendations, prepared by AOTMiT, or which of the variants will be implemented by the National Health Service, i.e. how much money, in the increase in valuations, will be given to health care providers to finance the increases.