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News
Outpatient doctors are terminating their contracts with the biggest private health insurance company Dôvera. The reason is, according to the President of the Association of Private Doctors, low payments. Termination of contracts applies to 3 100 outpatient clinics. This situation will currently not affect the patients, as the termination should be valid from the beginning of April. If doctors will not reach an agreement with the insurance company, they are not excluding protest actions.
Hospital doctors, who did not get increased salary, even though it is set by the law, may complaint to the MoH or bring a suit against hospital. However, those doctors who received lower January payment because hospitals did not pay them their personal allowance, just have to reconcile with the situation. The personal allowance is a not-claimable component of the salary and the employer does not have to admit it to the employee.
Medical Trade Union requires the further government to adopt an Act on doctors' wages. Wages of doctors should be thus adjusted by a special law, just like the wages of nurses and midwives. Proposal of the new law will be, according to the Medical Trade Union, in regard to the end of current election season, the subject of negotiation with future members of government.
Fight of doctors for higher salaries did not end successfully for everyone. For many of them the January payment was disappointing. Some salaries increased only by few euros, by others the directors of hospitals cut into the personal allowances, and so now they have lower salary than before. According to the Minister of Health Ivan Uhliarik the law determining the salaries of doctors applies to all hospitals. Management of each hospital should, according to him, find the resources for salaries. Minister recommends doctors to contact the ministry, if necessary.
Police will not prosecute members of Medical Trade Union, headed by the chairman Marián Kollár, for the protest action of doctors, which culminated in the declaration of emergency state. This results from the order of District Police Headquarters in Bratislava V, which rejected more than 20 complaints. According to the police investigator, Marián Kollár and his colleagues in trade union did not commit any criminal offence and they only set up their claims granted by the Constitution and Labour Code.
Labour inspectors are currently monitoring hospitals if they increased the basis wage of doctors from the beginning of this year. The change of relevant law after last year’s strikes committed the providers of in-patient care to the salary adjustment. The labour inspectors are verifying approximately 80 hospitals during one-day nationwide inspection. Inspectors will also check the procedure of hospitals in the case of withdrawal of notices of doctors.
Ministry of Health is currently not considering to use the €50 million reserved in the state budget for health care before the early parliamentary elections. According to the spokeswoman of the Ministry Katarína Zollerová it is not necessary in this moment. Medical trade unionists as well as smaller hospitals, however, already called few times to use the reserve for the increasing of salaries of healthcare professionals. Also General Health Insurance Company (Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa) asked for such additional funding.
Minister of Health Ivan Uhliarik today called on Medical Trade Union (MTU) to shortly submit the Code of Ethics of the relationship between doctor and patient and the proposal of anti-corruption measures in hospitals. Trade unionists committed themselves to elaborate these documents in the Memorandum, which ended the last year´s strike action of the doctors. Leader of trade unionists Marián Kollár claims that by the end of this week the final version of these documents should be prepared. After that, Medical Trade Union plans to submit them for discussion.
Some outpatient doctors, after the increasing of the wage for their nurses, will not have enough resources for their own salaries. According to the information of web portal ZdraveZdravotníctvo.sk, if in accordance with the new Act on minimum wage of nurses and midwives the doctor increases the salary of the nurse, his/her own wage might be endangered. This may happen in case, if these increased demands will not be covered by the higher payments from health insurance companies.
University hospital in Martin opened a new surgical pavilion. Its construction took two years and required an investment of approximately €15 million. The project was co-financed from the European Regional Development Fund under the Operational Programme Health. The participation of hospital was 5%. Pavilion has 92 new beds. According to Minister of Health Ivan Uhliarik the new pavilion meets the latest stringent conditions of 21st century.
