Two days before the Ministry of Health meets with the unions to resume the negotiations of the Framework Statute and discuss the draft prepared by her department, Mónica García has insisted on one of the measures that has generated the most concern in the sector: exclusivity for service heads of public health centers, who, according to the ministry’s proposal, could not make their work compatible with that of private centers. “No one imagines that someone can work at Coca Cola and Pepsi at the same time,” said the Minister of Health in statements sent to the media.
In this sense, García has insisted that this exclusivity for heads of service is a measure that is already being debated in some regional parliaments and in other countries. The fact that there are doctors with this type of positions who practice both in public and private healthcare, the minister points out, “we know that it generates conflicts of interest and bad practices that harm our national health system.” But this measure, he said, must be accompanied “by an improvement in remuneration, urging the autonomous communities to adequately remunerate their heads of service and free them from the necessary bureaucratic burden.”
The draft proposal that Health sent to the unions also contemplates a five-year exclusivity for specialists who have completed the MIR. This means that they will not be able to simultaneously practice in private healthcare during that time unless the public administration has only offered them a part-time contract. Health, the minister stated, “is committed to finding ways to retain the talent of our professionals in a context of high demand and high need for our doctors. However, this retention must always be based on decent conditions, job stability and fair remuneration, never on obligations, especially in the most unstable realities. Thus, García assures that his department is “open” to proposals that “prioritize the well-being and decent conditions” of professionals.
The Minister of Health insists that the text is still being negotiated and all the proposals that her department has sent must be debated. A meeting with the unions will take place this Wednesday to discuss the draft sent by the ministry.
17 hour guards
García, referring to the proposals “that have raised the most controversy and that still have to be negotiated and debated,” has alluded to his proposal to reduce guard hours from 24 hours to 17. “The guard hours will not have to be returned. This was the case until today and has been this way for 20 years and the commitment of the ministry and my staff is to change it,” the minister said “with the formula that we all decide.”
These words coincide with the rejection of the ministry’s proposals that the medical unions of Madrid (Amyts), Catalonia (Metges de Catalunya) and the Basque Country (SME) jointly made public this Monday. “The ministry opts for imposition, prohibition and restrictions with the aim of keeping professionals handcuffed,” they launched. CSIF has also stated that there are several “red lines” that the plant will not cross, such as that exclusivity is “at zero cost” or that the working day of health workers is not 35 hours in all communities.
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