Last week, the Health Committee dealt with, inter alia, the problem of wages in health care. The discussion focused on the draft amendment to the law on minimum wages in this sector, but the problem of low wages in the National Health Fund was also strongly resounded during it. They are at such a level that it is more and more difficult for a payer, who already has a budget of over a hundred billion, to keep employees.
Do you need an act to increase wages in the National Health Fund?
Published March 25, 2022 13:33
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The topic was raised by Czesław Hoc (PiS). He reminded that, according to the announcements of the Ministry of Health, the minimum salaries of doctors will increase by 1.8 thousand from July 1, 2022. PLN, nurses by approx. 1.5 thousand. PLN, a similar increase will be given to psychologists or physiotherapists, for example. - Meanwhile, employees of the National Health Fund work out of a sense of patriotism. Doctors employed there earn little, and they cannot work anywhere else - he reminded.
Maria Ochman, head of the Healthcare Solidarity movement, said that an act is needed that will guarantee a mechanism for achieving a level of remuneration in the Fund that will prevent the drain of professionals. - These people, not only in connection with the pandemic, were given jobs, not only due to the need to calculate salaries for health care workers. We have to look at what additional tasks will be imposed now, for example with the issue of immigration to Poland, military immigration - she said.
The vice-president of the National Health Fund, Bernard Waśko, informed the deputies that the employee turnover ratio during the four quarters increased by several percent in the last one, reaching an average of almost 10 percent. - There are branches with a turnover of 14 and 16 percent. annually, he said. It is particularly difficult for the Fund to retain IT specialists, analysts and medical professionals. - The Fund employs 420 nurses, 290 doctors and 154 pharmacists. This is both the control division, the analysis division, and the contracting division. Without these people, the timely transfer of funds for remuneration to medical entities you are talking about today would be impossible, and certainly not effective supervision over their subsequent spending - explained Bernard Waśko. An additional problem is that every ninth employee of the National Health Fund has already acquired pension rights. - Retirement very accelerated - said the vice-president.
The increases that the Fund may provide to employees this year oscillate around 3-6 percent. - The consequences of such low increases, with the rising costs of living and high inflation, pose a significant threat to the continuity of the organization's work - said Waśko.
It is not the first time that the problem of the level of salaries of NFZ employees is on the knife's edge - the problem is not, however, the lack of a law, but a rigid and low limit of the write-off for administrative purposes. He fought for its increase, among others former president of the NFZ Andrzej Jacyna, but he failed to convince decision-makers to take a risky PR step, which would be to allocate a slightly larger amount of money for administrative purposes.
