OZZL on the valuation of "exclusive work"

The National Board of OZZL welcomed the words of the President of PiS, Jarosław Kaczyński, about the need to organize the rules of employment and remuneration of doctors in public health care - so as to lead to a situation that the doctor works only in one place and is fairly rewarded for it. We accept with satisfaction the fact that, according to the PiS President, such doctors should earn as much as PLN 60,000 -80,000. per month, i.e. 10-14 times the average salary in the economy.

For years, the HRM has been calling for doctors to work in one workplace, believing that its implementation will benefit patients, doctors and the system as a whole. Doctors will engage with all their strength in one place to ensure patients are better seen, the number of medical errors due to fatigue, rush and lack of accuracy will decrease, and the temptation and the possibility of using public resources for private purposes will disappear. We are surprised that the PiS President did not notice these postulates of the HRM, the more so because we directed them to people and entities dependent on the ruling party: to successive health ministers in the PIS government, to successive Prime Ministers in the PiS government, to President Kaczyński himself, to subsequent congresses PIS. So far, none of the above-mentioned respondents have responded to our postulate, and the Minister of Health, Adam Niedzielski, has refused to talk to the representatives of HRM.

In addition, we would like to remind you that the HRM conducted a survey of doctors 2 years ago (February/March 2020) (using the help of the Practical Medicine portal), which shows that almost all doctors (84%) are ready to work in one place, in public health, if their salaries are adequate. They considered the amount of PLN 15,000 net to be appropriate, which - even taking into account inflation - is much less than the amount of PLN 60,000-80,000 agreed by the PiS chairman. You can be sure that today the results of the survey will be similar, because the postulate of "one doctor - one job" has been repeatedly voiced by many medical circles. The results of the study, together with the proposal to introduce appropriate remuneration of doctors for "exclusive" work, were sent to the Minister of Health. Unfortunately, these have been completely disregarded. In return, Minister of Health Adam Niedzielski decided that doctors in public health care should have a minimum wage ratio to the average wage in the economy of 1.45 (compared to 1.58 they actually had in hospitals in 2018). Minister Niedzielski "valued" the work of a specialist doctor about 7-10 times lower than the PiS president Jarosław Kaczyński did.

It is difficult to find out what is the reason for such a discrepancy between the practical actions of the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland, and the theses voiced by the President of the party forming the government. Are the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health pursuing a policy that is opposed to the party's policies that make up the government? Does the PiS president not know what the policy of his government and the minister of health look like in practice? Is the environment of the PiS President deliberately misleading his Boss?

In an open letter, HRM addressed the President of PiS, explaining what is the position of HRM on this matter and proposed a meeting devoted to this topic.

Source: OZZL