Number of doctors working after retirement down

Budapest, February 3 (MTI) – The number of doctors still working after retirement dropped by 37 percent in the third quarter of last year compared to the same period of 2012, daily Magyar Nemzet said on Monday, citing a report by the Pharmaceuticals and Health Care Quality Control Institute (GYEMSZI).

The number of health care workers with special qualification past the retirement age dropped by 64 percent and the number of all other pension-age health care workers dropped by 82 percent in the last quarter of 2013 year-on-year, the paper said.

Current regulations ban paying a monthly wage and a pension simultaneously but under a government decision a supplement can be paid to pension-age health care workers.

This supplement has however not proved an incentive strong enough to keep retired doctors on the job, the paper said, citing Janos Belteczki, the head of the Hungarian doctors’ federation. Many of them, aged 65 or even 70, left the profession citing huge workload as a result of staff shortage in the profession, Belteczki told the paper.

Another reason for the doctors’ decision is shortage of supplies and equipment in hospitals, Belteczki added.

Although the number of doctors going abroad dropped considerably last year as a result of wage hikes and government grants, the number of employees in Hungary’s health-care sector overall went down by 1.3 percent due to a high number of retirements, the paper said.

Photo: www.mellekhatas.hu

Source: http://hungarymatters.hu/