Additional paid procedures – Newspaper Kommersant No. 2 (7447) dated 01/10/2023

The White House adopted a resolution on the payment of 1.1 million healthcare workers monthly allowances in the amount of 4.5 thousand to 18.5 thousand rubles. According to Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, the first payments will begin in February. It is also recommended that the regions establish their own additional payments to physicians providing medical care outside the basic compulsory medical insurance program. In general, in 2023, as part of the program of state guarantees of free medical care, the indexation of the wage fund for medical workers by 8.5% is provided – due to this, as well as due to the expansion of the services provided, the financing of the program will increase by 295 billion rubles.

The government has legally fixed social payments to doctors of scarce specialties – the corresponding resolution, as Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at a meeting with his deputies on Monday, has been signed. Recall that plans to introduce such surcharges from 2023 were announced in December – allowances, in particular, will make it possible to bring the salaries of doctors closer to the targets of the May 2012 decrees, according to which the regions are required to maintain a wage level of at least 200% of the average for the constituent entity of the Russian Federation (see “Kommersant” dated December 8, 2022). In total, payments will cover about half of the medical staff – 1.1 million people, 152.4 billion rubles are allocated in the budget for these purposes.

In primary care institutions, payments for junior medical staff will amount to 4.5 thousand rubles. per month (the same amount will be received by the junior medical staff of the ambulance), for medical workers with secondary education – 6.5 thousand rubles, for nurses – 8 thousand rubles. Paramedics and ambulance nurses are entitled to additional payments in the amount of 7 thousand rubles. Ambulance doctors will receive an allowance of 11.5 thousand rubles. (the same additional payment is provided for medical workers with a higher non-medical education who carry out complex research, for example, in the diagnosis of oncology). Primary care doctors can count on 14.5 thousand rubles, and central district, district and district hospitals – 18.5 thousand rubles per month.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, doctors will receive the first payments for January in February, while the authorities must draw up lists of medical organizations whose employees will be paid bonuses.

At the same time, she added, the regions are recommended to establish payments from their own budgets for doctors who “provide medical care that is not included in the basic program of compulsory medical insurance”.

Payments are introduced in addition to the indexation of the wage fund, provided for by the program of state guarantees of free medical care for 2023-2025 – this year it includes an increase in salaries by at least 8.5%. The program itself is expanding by increasing the number of available types of services and opportunities for medical rehabilitation, as well as the inclusion of new areas (prevention and treatment of hepatitis C, early detection and treatment of diabetes). Financing of the program this year will increase by 295 billion rubles. (14% increase in primary care, 35% – medical rehabilitation). Among other innovations, the program is supplemented with provisions on the analysis by the Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund of the cost structure for compulsory medical insurance and on its comparison with the cost structure of 2022. “In case of any deviations, the fund is obliged to inform the Ministry of Health and the regions about this in order to take urgent response measures,” said Tatyana Golikova.

Today, the government reported on the start of payments of a single allowance to low-income families with children under the age of 17 and pregnant women. Recall that we are talking about combining seven existing payments into one, which will be 50%, 75% or 100% of the regional subsistence minimum and will cover 10 million recipients (see “Kommersant” dated November 16, 2022). This year, the financial support for such a payment is almost 1.7 trillion rubles. According to Tatyana Golikova, as of January 8, an allowance was assigned for 185,000 children and 4,000 pregnant women – the total number of applications received for a single allowance was more than 850,000.

Evgenia Kryuchkova