Polish hospitals warn they can’t afford wage rises for medics promised by government

Managers of Polish hospitals are warning that they do not have enough money to fulfil the pay rises negotiated by the government last year after weeks of protests by medics. Some are also refusing to sign off on changes in the way services are priced, which they say do not adequately represent the real rise in costs.

To resolve the impasse, the National Health Fund (NFZ), which finances public healthcare in Poland, has offered additional funds, but it is not yet clear if it will be enough to cover the expenses hospitals face after the pay raises that came into force in July.

At the beginning of last month, hospitals in Poland were obliged to increase their minimum salaries by an average of 28%. The NFZ said that it had released 6.5 billion zloty (€1.4 billion) of additional funds to meet those costs.

But a summary prepared by Bernadeta Skóbel of the Association of Polish Counties (ZPP), based on data from 160 hospitals, shows that half of them will not have enough money to cover the increases for medical staff, let alone for administrative staff, which is also required by the new law, reports the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

According to her calculations, in an average district hospital expenditure on salaries accounts for 75% of all costs, while the real increase in the value of funding provided by the NFZ averages just 7%. In this situation, raising wages by 20% or 30% seems impossible.

“According to the data provided by the facilities, it appears that hospitals are short of between 130,000 zloty and even 600,000 zloty per month,” said Władysław Perchaluk, president of the Association of County Hospitals of the Silesian Province during a press conference on Monday.

The director of the Multi-specialist District Hospital in Tarnowskie Góry, Sebastian Grabowski, speaking at the same press conference, added that his hospital will have to subsidise over 830,000 a month in extra pay rises.

“Between 1 July and the end of the year, the hospital will therefore have to contribute an estimated 5 million zloty to meet the statutory increases,” he said.

In response to the concerns, on Tuesday this week the NFZ announced that an additional 350 million zloty (€74 million) would be allocated for pay rises in the second half of the year.

“Observing…the signals we are receiving, particularly from district hospitals, we have decided to intervene additionally in order to help hospitals, to increase funding,” said Bernard Wasko, deputy head of the NFZ, at a briefing, quoted by industry news service Rynek Zdrowia.

It is not yet clear if the additional funds will satisfy the costs of wage rises. A spokesman for the ZPP in Silesia province told Notes from Poland that hospital directors are for now waiting for more detailed information regarding their respective institutions.

Meanwhile, there are also concerns about the fact that, according to the NFZ, by Monday this week 20% of hospitals had still not signed an addendum on the new pricing of services – meaning the costs they can charge to the NFZ for providing those services in the state-funded healthcare system.

Some hospital directors report that the addendums they received are erroneous, reports Rynek Zdrowia. In Kraków, Myślenice and Dąbrowa Tarnowska, directors say that the annexes from the NFZ price their services at the same or lower amounts than before the increases came into effect.

Waśko added that he hoped that the number of signed annexes would increase in the next few days.

Main photo credit: Adam Guz / Kancelaria Premiera / flickr.com under (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.