Salaries for special purposes – Newspaper Kommersant No. 56 (7501) dated 04/03/2023

Medical workers providing assistance to the wounded in civilian medical facilities in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, in Zaporozhye, Kherson and Belgorod regions will receive special payments from the federal budget. According to the government decree, the amount of additional payments will be from 20 thousand to 100 thousand rubles. per month and will depend on the position, duties performed and the number of hours worked. According to medical trade unions, this money will help attract additional personnel to the regions. At the same time, remembering the previous experience of introducing such surcharges (in connection with the coronavirus and the reform of primary care), trade unions fear that the practice of accruing additional amounts on the ground may not be entirely fair.

Medical workers in the border Belgorod region, as well as four annexed regions of Russia, will begin to receive special additional payments for the treatment of the wounded during the military operation in Ukraine. As follows from the published government decree, there will be five categories of recipients in total. The largest amounts are up to 100 thousand rubles. per month – will be able to receive managers, heads of departments and doctors of medical institutions that provide assistance in the field of “anesthesiology and resuscitation”. Also in this group are doctors involved in surgical manipulations, emergency doctors and forensic experts.

The second category – payments up to 60 thousand rubles – includes deputy heads of medical organizations, chief nurses, doctors providing specialized medical care in a hospital. In the third category, with payments of up to 40,000 rubles, there are paramedical personnel of medical institutions, ambulance stations and forensic examinations. In the fourth – the rest of the nursing staff (up to 30 thousand rubles), in the fifth (up to 20 thousand rubles) – the junior staff of medical institutions. The amount of additional payment for a particular employee will be calculated according to a formula that takes into account the number of hours worked, the norm of working hours and the length of the working week. The total amount of additional payments from the budget is not specified in the resolution.

Let us explain that now military personnel and civilians who were injured during a military operation are being treated in various types of medical facilities. These are field hospitals under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense, hospitals that are part of the compulsory medical insurance system, as well as recently opened branches of federal medical institutions. Accordingly, doctors of medical institutions of the Ministry of Defense (including those called up during mobilization), as well as contract doctors who have taken up such work on a voluntary basis, can work with the wounded. The branches of federal medical institutions mainly employ workers who come from other regions of the Russian Federation.

According to the chairman of the All-Republican Trade Union of Health Workers of the LPR, Yana Strokach, the main volume of medical care for the wounded is provided by medical institutions of the annexed regions, which are subordinate to the local Ministry of Health. “The hospitals in our region bear a huge load. For example, one doctor can provide treatment for up to 80 patients a day, and one nurse can perform medical manipulations for a hundred patients,” she says. “Taking into account the fact that, until 2023, the average salary of a doctor in our region was 42 thousand rubles. , paramedical personnel – 29 thousand rubles, payments are likely to keep the necessary specialists in the region. According to the trade union, 11.7 thousand representatives of paramedical personnel and 4.2 thousand doctors are now working in the LPR. In total, about 80 thousand medical workers work in the annexed territories, as the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation previously reported.

Mikhail Androchnikov, deputy chairman of the trade union of healthcare workers of the Russian Federation (part of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions), notes that impressive sums are promised to specialists, however, according to him, the practice of accruing such federal surcharges has shown that their mechanism can be opaque. “How many problems arose when the government introduced special surcharges for those who work with coronavirus in 2020: both the original decree and additional clarifications left the last word to the regions, and they often abused this,” says Mikhail Androchnikov. “Problems have also arisen recently , when paying additional payments to primary care specialists from January 1, 2023, the list of recipients raised questions. It is possible that there will be the same difficulties with the new payments.”

Anastasia Manuylova