According to recent proposal of the Framework Statute of healthcare professionals, some physicians will have to choose between working in the public or private sector, excluding the possibility of combining the two.
The Alianza de la Sanidad Privada Española (ASPE) totally rejects the modification that the Ministry of Health is planning to make to the Framework Statute in relation to the incompatibility of healthcare professionals. Neither in the case of heads of service nor in the case of professionals who have successfully completed the MIR is it a logical solution and, surely, it even harms the interests that the Ministry of Health itself may pursue.
In ASPE’s opinion, the public health system itself will be affected by this imposition because it will provoke the exodus of those heads of service who see the contracting conditions and flexibility of the private sector as an incentive compared to the National Health System. In addition, prohibiting labor compatibility for service chiefs will discourage the most qualified professionals from taking on the position, a clearly counterproductive consequence.
The Ministry of Health’s proposal, moreover, starts from a premise based on prejudice. It considers that there is a conflict of interest on the part of the physician, a fact that implies doubting the ethics and professionalism of his own heads of service and younger professionals. “Compatibility between public and private healthcare can and should be regulated, but without falling into measures that jeopardize the balance of the system. The real problem of the healthcare system that requires an urgent response by the government is the lack of professionals in the healthcare sector, regardless of the ownership of the center,” says the president of ASPE, Carlos Rus….
For ASPE, the criminalization of the professional group represented by the heads of service is capricious, generalizing and without real support. The truth is that many professionals work in both areas without this implying a decrease in the quality of their work. “Once again we are facing an exercise in criminalization by the Health Department of any hint of public-private collaboration within the framework of the National Health System,” says the president of ASPE, Carlos Rus.
Experience and data, on the other hand, have shown on many occasions that the National Health System needs the joint work of the entire value chain, including the public and private sectors, in order to function properly. “When this collaboration prevails, the degree of success and patient satisfaction far exceeds any attempt at confrontation without any basis, and this should be the only thing that guides healthcare governance,” adds the president of the private healthcare employers’ association.
Lack of healthcare professionals
At present, the real problem of the National Health System is the generalized lack of professionals, a fact that is expected to worsen in the coming years. In the report ‘Medical Specialists in Private Healthcare’ carried out by ASPE to collaborate with the Ministry of Health in the sixth study of ‘Supply-Need of Specialist Doctors’, a clear shortage of healthcare professionals was detected and the future risk that this situation will worsen as 40% of specialist doctors in the private sector will retire in the next 15 years.
Therefore, ASPE, which has put forward numerous initiatives to solve the problem, once again urges the public administration to provide solutions to the shortage already detected and not to pit the public and private sectors against each other or to criminalize the professionals.
Article published on the ASPE website
