Family Doctors To Go On Medical Leave, From Wednesday To Friday

The requests will be filed by all family doctors, and protest action will continue.

 

“We have ways of compensating family doctors financially. I will reward performance in primary medical assistance by correlating a doctor’s income with the volume and quality of the services provided. There already exist two national programs, the uterine cancer screening and the prevention of cardio-vascular illnesses, which we will carry out with the doctors,” health minister Ion Bazac said Friday in a press release.

 

Bazac stated that the Ministry of Health, together with the National Health House, has identified the necessary solutions so that the 2009 health budget would have a minimal impact on the family doctors’ practice.

 

The health commissions of the two chambers of Parliament approved, on Wednesday, the budget allotted to the Ministry of Health for 2009. Bazac said that the budget is 0.2% higher than last year and he hopes to receive more money at a future budget revision.

 

Family doctors announced in a press statement last week that they are unhappy with the funds assigned to primary medical assistance and requested that at the least, the budget be kept at 2008’s level, in order to avoid driving practices to bankruptcy.

 

The National Family Medicine Society (SNMF) and the National Family Doctors’ employers Association (PNMF) claim, in a common statement, that the funds allotted to primary medical assistance are 40.69% lower than in 2008, and the reduction is “the most drastic” among all other segments in the healthcare system and the entire state budget.

 

Family doctors claim that the projected budget for 2009 grants only 5.4% for primary medical assistance, “even though the Social Democratic Party’s governing program provided for an amount in the range of 10% to 12%, and the Democratic Liberal Party promised an increase in the income of medical personnel, with both groups pledging 6% of the GDP for the health sector.”

 

The doctors’ statement says that family medicine practices are private enterprises and the income is not similar to the salaries of medics in the public sector, as doctors get only a third of the medical practice’s revenues.

Around 50 family doctors protested on Friday in Focsani, eastern Romania, at the headquarters of the Family Medics’ Association of Vrancea, unhappy with the funds allotted to primary medical assistance, which they claim are 40.6% lower than last year’s.