Prague, Sept 12 (CTK) – Czech general practitioners will close their surgeries on September 21 in protest against long-lasting troubles in primary adult care, including low prices of health services and limited powers of GPs, an extraordinary meeting of the General Practitioners’ Association board decided yesterday.
The board deputy chairman Petr Sonka told CTK that the decision may still be changed depending on the results of a meeting to be held at the Health Ministry on Thursday.
Health Minister Svatopluk Nemecek (Social Democrats, CSSD) said the GPs’ strike threat amounts to blackmail ahead of the October regional elections.
He told journalists that the deadline for the ministry to draft its new annual directive that sets the prices of health services is October 31. That is why he wonders why GPs want to go on strike as early as September 21, he said, calling the GPs’ threat “an ultimatum” aimed to provoke an escalation [of the situation] shortly before the regional elections.
The monthly income of a GPs’ surgery is 200,000 crowns, which is enough, Nemecek said, and labelled the planned protest “a strike of millionaires.”
He said he respects GPs’ work and wants to conduct standard negotiations with them about the ministerial directive on health care prices.
At the meeting on Thursday, GPs’ representatives will meet the deputy health minister who is preparing the directive for 2017, Nemecek said.
The Association declared the state of endangered primary care in late August, when it also heralded its plan to close down GPs’ surgeries as a temporary protest in September.
The GPs argue that hospitals will receive money from the state to increase doctors’ wages by 10 percent in the months to come, while no increase in out-patient doctors’ wages is planned.
Sonka said GPs actually want no extra money but only what the ministry promised previously, and it should be used to raise the flat sum that goes to GPs for each of their patients by 6 percent.
Nemecek said all doctors cannot see their pay increased by 10 percent because the costs would be beyond the system’s financial possibilities.
“I must say frankly that we really want to preferably support hospitals, as they are considerably short of nurses and doctors. I will gladly support GPs as well, but the [demanded] sum definitely will not go to them, since the average [monthly] income of a GP ranges from 200,000 to 220,000 crowns, according to various statistics,” Nemecek said.
GPs surgeries emphasise that they have to cover the costs of energy, medical equipment and wages of the personnel from their monthly income.
GPs also dislike the lawmakers’ previous plan to pass a bill binding them to serve temporarily in hospitals. The authors withdrew the proposal from the bill last week, but Sonka said they might include it in it again in the second reading in parliament.
“We remain vigilant,” Sonka said.
($1=23.975 crowns)
