Filenews 14 April 2022 - by Marilena Panagi
A breath away before reaching an agreement are doctors and the State Health Services Agency for the afternoon operation of public hospitals. The dialogue that began several months ago with the worst conditions seems to have finally paid off and now the operation of hospitals and beyond the hours of public service must be taken for granted.
In essence, guilds and CSO have preliminarily agreed on the way in which doctors will be paid for the services they will offer beyond their normal working hours. At the same time, the Request of the Doctors was also accepted by the CySEC that it will not be an afternoon operation of the hospitals, which will take place in the form of a shift, but that the program that will be drawn up will concern overtime work and on a voluntary basis.
It is recalled that with the beginning of the dialogue, the Doctors' Guilds had reacted strongly to the proposal put before them by the CySEC, arguing that they themselves, on the basis of agreements, remain civil servants on secondment to the Organization and therefore their working conditions are determined by the law concerning the public service. Therefore, the agreement on the status with which they will work during non-working (for the public service) hours is considered to be a very important step.
Regarding the amount of remuneration that doctors will receive during their overtime, information from "F" indicates that it was agreed that:
⦁ For surgical procedures, a percentage is set which will be calculated on the basis of the compensation that the HIO receives from the HIO for each operation separately.
⦁ For non-surgical procedures, the remuneration of doctors will also be calculated as a percentage of the compensation of the HIO.S.
⦁ For the operation of outpatient clinics, doctors will receive a fixed amount (per day). For each specialty, an indicative number of visits will be set for doctors, but the amount they will receive will remain fixed whether the doctor exceeds the specified number of visits or not.
⦁ Overtime will be for the period from 3 to 7 pm.
⦁ Overtime will be on a voluntary basis and will concern the specialties for which there is a need to extend the opening hours in order to serve the patients.
The percentages and the amount of the fixed remuneration of doctors for their services in outpatient clinics have been determined and to a huge extent agreed. Some details of the overtime programme to be implemented remain pending, but these do not appear to affect what has been agreed so far.
The compensations that seem to have been agreed, are, according to information provided by "F", lower than what the Director General of the Ministry of Health had proposed during the ministry's intervention in the dialogue between the CSO and the Trade Unions and higher than what the Organization had originally put before the doctors.
The completion of the dialogue between doctors and the CySEC, of course, paves the way for the afternoon operation of public hospitals, but it does not give the green light for the immediate implementation of the overtime program, since the Organization must now consult both nurses and other health professionals whose presence is deemed necessary in order to safely offer services outside the public sector.
The Nurses' Guilds enter the dialogue
On the basis of the old overtime programme they set the debate
With the completion of the negotiation with the doctors, the CSO is now opening the dialogue with the Nurses' Guilds which, according to information from the "F", have already received the relevant invitations. Besides, this particular order had been agreed at the beginning of the dialogue, when the CySEC had invited all the Guilds for negotiation, but when it was found that there was a difference of opinion with the doctors, it was considered necessary to first complete the consultation with PASYKI and PASYDY (doctors' branch) and then the rest of the health professionals.
In the case of nurses, as we are informed, the CSO is preparing to propose fees in percentages of the compensation received from the HIO for each surgery or other service it offers.
For their part, the Guilds seem to be preparing to submit to the CSO a proposal that will be based on the older overtime program which operated for several years in public hospitals and aimed at the time, the elimination of waiting lists.
These different positions of the two sides may cause some turmoil at the beginning of the dialogue, however, everything as can be seen from the unofficial positions of the guilds will depend on the financial proposal that the CSO will put before them.
And in the case of nurses, the Guilds make it a condition that public hospitals operate in the afternoon on the basis of overtime and not under the shift regime, since again the public servant status of the employees is invoked. At the same time, the nurses' guilds are said to support the voluntary nature of the work beyond the fixed hours of the Public Service.
It is recalled that in the early stages of the dialogue, the Organization had put before the nurses a financial proposal which was probably not accepted, but it is expected that with the resumption of the negotiation, the CSO will come back with new data.
However, the president of the Nurses' Branch of PASYDY, Prodromos Argyridis, told "F" that "we go to the dialogue with an open mind and a willingness to cooperate. We have our lines but we believe that with the right negotiation we will reach an agreement that will satisfy both sides." When asked whether, once work during non-working hours will be voluntary, there will be interest from nurses to properly staff the departments of hospitals that will be in operation, Mr. Argyridis replied that "from our experience with the implementation of overtime programs, it seems that even now there will be interest. As long as there is proper planning and certainly the staff has the necessary incentives."
As far as the rest of the health professionals are concerned, the focus seems to be on the field of technical radiologists for whom, however, as we are informed, the agreements between the CSO and the nurses regarding the way of compensation and work will apply.
The whole design does not include radio-diagnostic examinations since the competent departments are already operating under a different regime.
