Poland to track doctors' high earnings in public hospitals

Poland's parliament has passed legislation that will enable the tracking of doctors' salaries within public healthcare institutions. The bill, which moves to the Senate and then to the president for signature, mandates the Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Tariffication (AOTMiT) to collect this data starting in September.

Under the new rules, AOTMiT will gather salary information using doctors' PESEL identification numbers or their medical practice licenses. This contrasts with the current system, where the agency collects data based on individual contracts and invoices, failing to capture the full earnings of doctors who may work for multiple facilities or hold several agreements with a single hospital.

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This law concerns only the agency's powers and its insight into earnings, so it will not curb the phenomenon of high doctors' salaries in healthcare, it will simply make the state aware of who earns how much and where.

Recent data from AOTMiT indicated that in February, 625 contracts and 49 employment agreements resulted in monthly earnings exceeding 100,000 PLN. More recent findings, obtained by "Rzeczpospolita," reveal that some individual invoices from doctors reached between 300,000 and 350,000 PLN for a single month's work. Former Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna previously noted that some doctors submitted invoices as high as 299,000 PLN.

While the law aims to increase transparency regarding individual earnings, experts note it may not directly curb high medical salaries. "This law concerns only the agency's powers and its insight into earnings, so it will not curb the phenomenon of high doctors' salaries in healthcare, it will simply make the state aware of who earns how much and where," said lawyer Krzysztof Dzięgielewski. He added that this information should have been available much earlier.

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I think this should have been known for a long time.