“Temporary medical work in public hospitals is the symptom of a mode of management that needs to be radically changed”

2023-04-26 18:30:05

Lhe budget and health ministers have just set a new maximum tariff for temporary doctors in public hospitals. Do the budget and transport ministers decide on the remuneration of temporary workers at the SNCF? More than five thousand hospital doctors prefer to work on a temporary basis, in particular in the specialties most in competition with private hospitals, such as emergency medicine, anesthesia, radiology, paediatrics, etc.

Despite the precariousness of these contracts and, sometimes, the stress related to work under unknown conditions, these doctors do not choose this mode of exercise only to earn more. Most of them want above all to remain independent of institutions which they consider to be abusive vis-à-vis their incumbent colleagues, because of the number of vacant doctor’s posts. A vicious circle.

Read the decryption: Article reserved for our subscribers Medical temporary work: how hospitals are adapting to price caps

Faced with this symptom of the ills of public hospitals, this ministerial decision appears adapted and courageous. Adapted, because the new ceiling price for medical interim care (1,390 euros gross for a 24-hour call) is higher than the average price charged. It leads to a gross monthly salary of 14,000 euros in the case of two shifts per week and one weekend shift every three weeks.

Deducting their professional expenses and their leave, this new tariff still allows temporary doctors to achieve, for equivalent working time, a net income higher than that of hospital practitioners.

A showdown

Courageous, because it is not easy to put the lid on the competition between public hospitals in search of increasingly rare doctors, with its corollary, the inflation of the costs of the interim. Thus, the fact that interim doctors have decided to engage in a trial of strength by refusing to work at this capped rate makes more visible the difficulty of very many hospital services saved by these doctors and by others, with foreign qualifications.

Read the report: Article reserved for our subscribers From the shortage of general practitioners to emergencies, the hospital care system is on the verge of drowning

But this decision remains piecemeal, because the medical interim in public hospitals remains the symptom of a mode of management to change radically. In order not to worsen the situation of public hospitals, the decision taken should be accompanied by a set of other measures, in particular:

– the application of the capping of these tariffs to the entire sector, including private hospitals and the private doctors who practice there;

– the significant and long-lasting increase in the remuneration of the most difficult constraints of public doctors;

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