The Minister of Health, Alexandru Rogobete, declared that he will do everything in his power to ensure that by the end of the year the guards are properly paid and the residents are included in the paid guard lines. The minister specified that he already spoke with the Minister of Finance and the budgetary impact is approximately half a billion lei per year.
“If we are discussing the human resource in health, from my point of view, the biggest emergency today, and we are already working to manage to solve it by the end of December 1 of this year, is the payment of the guards at the value of the salary that is being paid”, said the Minister of Health, Alexandru Rogobete, on Antena 3 CNN, taken over by News.ro.
The minister specified that the on-call rate is calculated based on the 2018 salary.
“Here is a great inequity for those who are on-call in the hospital and this is where the tension and problems that we all know appear, uncovered on-call lines. (..) I believe that with this update and indexation of the rates to the value of 2026, as is normal in the end, the on-call tension will decrease, plus, in addition to this update of the rates, I want to add a progressive payment mechanism”, he also announced the minister.
He explained that this means that whoever does one guard per month receives the guard tariff at the value of the year 2026.
“From the second, third, fourth extra shift per month, I want us to add a bonus, the on-call rate to increase progressively, because the degree of exhaustion of a doctor who does 5, 6, 7 shifts per month is very high compared to one who only does one shift. Either I consider it ethical, that it is fair to reward if you want this extra work, which is not easy at all in the shift and especially in the large emergency hospitals”, emphasized the Minister of Health.
Alexandru Rogobete stated that next week he will start the official meetings with the unions.
“1st, 2nd and 3rd year residents are not paid for guard duty”
“I will meet with their representatives one by one, and I already had a meeting with the Romanian College of Physicians, with Mrs. Poiană, I presented her thinking for the guard. It seems that we are all lined up on this discussion. Of course, we meet for make-up, adaptations, administrative optimizations, but I wish that by the end of this year we will solve the guards once and for all, because it is unfair, for so many years, the doctors in this country have voluntary guards”, mentioned the Minister of Health.
The Minister of Health also stated that he cares a lot about the young generation, the resident doctors.
“Today, in Romania, residents of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd years are not paid for on-call and do not do one on-call, they do from 5 on-call and up in the government program, but also in my objectives, as Minister of Health, including the payment of on-call for resident doctors, regardless of the year of study. And I want it to be applied simultaneously with the increase in rates for all professional categories”, added the Minister of Health.
Rogobete stated that he had an informal discussion with the Minister of Finance.
“The budgetary impact is approximately half a billion lei, per year. It is not such a large amount, taking into account that the budget of the health system is 130 billion per year”, Alexandru Rogobete also said.
“I will do everything in my power, so that by the end of the year, the guards are properly paid and the residents are included in the paid guard lines,” the minister emphasized.
