Suspended department at one hospital means a flurry of work at another

Recall, the hospital in Zywiec has suspended the operation of the emergency room, as well as the departments of internal medicine, surgery, gynecology and orthopedics. The reason is the financial arrears for the realization of overcontracts, amounting to PLN 40 million. Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna assessed such action as blackmail against the National Health Fund. As a result of the suspension of the departments, patients from Zywiec are mainly being sent to a hospital in Bielsko-Biała.

- We are seeing an increased influx of patients, as patients from the Zywiec district are also reaching us. Our ED, Emergency Room and wards are overcrowded. Places are starting to run out especially for internal medicine and surgical patients. However, through the prism of the hospital in Zywiec, one can look at the situation of county hospitals in Poland in general, which is very difficult, and has been getting worse for years. These are hospitals that tend to have basic wards. Procedures in them are lowly valued. Often this pricing does not even cover the cost of implementation. These hospitals have had mounting debts for a long time. Some of these hospitals are trying to save themselves by suspending the operation of their wards," Klaudiusz Komor said on the program You Get Up and You Know on TVN24.

Meanwhile, there is a lively discussion in the country around statements made by Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna, who said on Piasecki's Talk program that there are doctors who earn as much as PLN 300,000 a month on contracts in the public system. The minister also asked the AOTMiT for additional analysis to see if the health system could bear these salaries, pointing out that the cost of the increases was 100 billion zlotys from 2022 to 2024.

- The number of doctors earning this kind of money is less than 1 percent. These are usually high-class specialists, working under a civil contract and earning, for example, a percentage of the services performed. Doctors in hospitals mostly work on a full-time basis, earning as much as indicated by the law on the lowest salaries. In the case of a specialist doctor, this is about 10,500 gross," said Klaudiusz Komor.

As he added, doctors have long been calling for a thorough reform, which must start with the valuation of services so that hospitals do not lose out on them. In their view, the law also needs to be changed so that doctors want to work in public hospitals.

- Residency vacancies remain in general surgery. There is a shortage of internists, pediatricians, neurologists or surgeons. In most, except cardiology, we have a shortage of specialists. Young doctors are now most likely to specialize in radiology or family medicine, which is gaining popularity. The biggest influence on the choice of specialization is not salary, but organizational efficiency, legal security and the conditions under which they will later work," the NRL vice president pointed out.