The Health Ministry wants to introduce new rules to the contracts that hospitals enter into with specialists. A doctor on contract is to work a minimum of half-time at a hospital, and if he or she wants to work at another hospital, the existing employer will have to agree.
MZ: changes in contracts are needed
Published July 11, 2025 09:09
Fot. Getty Images/iStockphoto
The Trilateral Health Care Team held a meeting on Thursday to discuss - among other things - a planned amendment to the Salary Law. Unlike the meeting of the Team's presidium, which heard proposals for changes in the law itself, this time the health ministry presented a package of changes in the area of contracts, which affect about three-quarters of specialist doctors. The topic arouses emotions on all sides, some of the trade unions (as well as employers' organizations) expected to present the idea of limiting the maximum rates that doctors can earn in the public system, but the health ministry has a different idea on the matter (or simply does not know how - legally - to introduce such limits).
The ministry is proposing several changes that (especially if implemented together) would also translate into a reduction in contract salaries:
- No more contracts specifying earnings as a percentage of a procedure (and at the same time writing into the contracts the number of procedures a doctor must perform as part of his salary);
- The minimum contract term is to be the equivalent of half-time;
- entering into a parallel contract with another hospital is to be possible only with the consent of the existing employer;
- AOTMiT will collect data on contract salaries including uniquely identifiable information, that is, together with the PWZ number.
Such solutions can be expected to weaken wage pressures, but also (and perhaps especially) the natural exodus of specialist staff from county hospitals and the concentration of services assumed in the hospital reform.
Earlier, the MZ presented proposed amendments to the Minimum Wages Law:
- Moving the annual July adjustment to January 1,
- moving away from the table of labor coefficients and the base amount in favor of the index of salary growth in the state budget sphere or the index of pension indexation.
These proposals by the ministry are not accepted by the unions, but talks on changes to the wage law at the Team-wide forum are just beginning. Thursday's meeting was adjourned and will continue on July 18.
