Prague, Feb 19 (CTK) – The number of doctors’ job contracts in the Czech Republic has been rising in the past few years, while the number of nurses has been falling, according to data of the Institute of Health Information and Statistics (UZIS) that the tripartite council will debate on Monday.
The Council of Economic and Social Agreement that brings together representatives of the government, trade unions and employers will deal with health care challenges, the bill on university hospitals, the digital market and other issues.
The UZSI says the number of doctors’ job contracts is increasing mainly in acute care, but it is falling in inpatient care in hospitals where salaries are generally lower.
On the contrary, nurses are leaving hospitals for outpatient departments.
From 2010-2015, the number of nurses’ job contracts in acute care decreased by 1530 and in other hospital care it was by another 478, the UZSI says.
While in 2010, there were 38,653 physicians’ job contracts and 6,993 dentists’ jobs in the Czech Republic, five years later, it was 2,637 and 584 more.
There is an opposite trend when it comes to nurses. In 2010, 83,967 nurses’ job contracts were registered, while five years later, it was 1,279 fewer.
In total, there were 211,909 doctors and nurses’ job contracts in the Czech Republic with a population of 10.5 million in 2015.
However, the number of job contracts does not exactly equal to the number of health care workers since some doctors may work half- or part-time at several workplaces.
According to the UZIS and the Health Ministry, the Czech Republic is not short of doctors on the whole, but locally, as many of them are not willing to work in small municipalities, Health Ministry spokeswoman Stepanka Cechova told CTK.
The most doctors work in Prague. In 2015, there were roughly seven doctors’ job contracts per 1,000 inhabitants. On the contrary, the worst situation was in the Central Bohemia Region with fewer than three job contracts per 1000 inhabitants, the UZSI registered.
The trend is similar in the case of nurses.
In the regions that suffer from the lack of doctors, their salaries in the private sector are higher than in state health-care facilities.
However, in general, the salaries in state health-care facilities are higher than in the private ones and they are slightly rising.
In private health-care facilities, the average monthly salary of a doctor was 58,828 crowns, while in the state sector it was about 7,500 crowns higher in 2015. Nurses and midwives in private facilities earned 25,434 crowns a month on average, while in the stats sector it was 5,400 crowns more.
($1=25.372 crowns)
