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View Full Version : Time to change health system



NewsWhore
03-26-2009, 06:20 PM
Public Health Minister Bautista Rojas Gomez is maintaining his stance against giving in to Dominican Medical Association (CMD) demands for an across-the-board wage increase for public hospital doctors. The minister called on the doctors to sit down to talks geared towards "a transformation of the public health system."
He said that the Ministry could not sustain the present system where doctors get paid without putting in the hours. He mentioned the specific case of Santo Domingo's Padre Billini Hospital that has 218 doctors on its staff, of whom only 25-30 see patients at the hospital on a regular basis, and 20-30 others who see patients one or two days a week. He said the Ministry of Public Health had recently dismissed physicians working in San Pedro de Macoris for being on the payroll but not going to work. He insists this is a normal situation at public hospitals nationwide. Attending physicians are paid around RD$24,000 a month, regardless of the number of patients they see. Others, that work at Social Security clinics, make up to RD$70,000 a month.
As reported in El Caribe, CMD president Dr. Waldo Ariel Suero says that Dr. Rojas Gomez's statements "do not intimidate doctors."

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