The latest cunning plan from the Ministry of Health is to tackle the yawning gap in the number of doctors in Portugal by hiring family physicians from Spanish regions along the border.
This kind offer has been seen as particularly unattractive by Portugal's Iberian neighbours as the money on offer, just €2,746 a month is half the salary that doctors can earn in Spain.
Adverts have been placed in regional media in Andalusia, Galicia, Castile & Leon in an effort to recruit 115 Spanish doctors to work in Portugal’s health centres with gross pay levels the same as their Portuguese colleagues so as not to cause upset.
Added to the folly of this plan and the potential 50% pay cut is the fact the Spanish health service is keen to keep those doctors working in Spanish regions along the border, which also are suffering from a lack of doctors, and will entice them to stay should they look like leaving.
The president of Portugal’s Medical Association said he had no reservations as to the hiring of foreign doctors, there are plenty here already, provided that the pay scales are equal to those given to Portuguese doctors.
In August last year we reported on the Cuban doctor debacle where the Ministry was forced to admit that far from being cheap, these imported doctors were costing the taxpayer €5,900 per month, provoking a less than polite suggestion from the chairman of the Medical Council that the Ministry perhaps would like to pay their Portuguese equivalents the same salary.
It turned out that the €5,900 a month being paid for each Cuban doctor was divided between the doctor and the Cuban health service. The doctor got just €900 a month and the Portuguse taxpayer was shelling out €5,000 a month per doctor to subsidise the Cuban state.
The latest advertising in Spain gives an application deadline of this Friday and Spanish doctors can apply to work in health centers in any part of Portugal for half pay, but the idea that they would be happy to work in the Portuguese interior regions for a health service that is poorly managed and underfunded may prove to be another error.
