There will be no more stoppages of doctors this week or the following. The Metges de Catalunya union and the Department of Health have reached a agreement tonight, after three days of intense negotiation after the strike of January 25 and 26 that brought thousands of physicians to the streets. So the union has called off the strike which was also scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday and Friday throughout the public healthcare.
Salut has committed to apply a series of “urgent measures” to improve accessibility to the system, “optimize” the schedule of the doctors and “debureaucratize” consultations, as explained, close to ten at night, the general secretary of Metges de Catalunya, Xavier Leonart. The union has thus renounced the direct salary supplement in the payroll of the doctors that it requested up to now, understanding that these measures proposed by the ‘conselleria’ will already be accompanied by a series of “Budget items”, Leonart said.
Until today, and throughout the six meetings that have taken place in recent weeks, the main stumbling block was welfare and economic. On the one hand, Metges of Catalonia, the majority union among the doctors, claimed to put a limit to doctors’ agendas, while Salut opts for the self organization. On the other hand, in addition, the union demanded a direct salary supplement in the payroll of doctorsapart from the rest of the toilets, without going through a negotiating table. Salut always opposed the latter, understanding that it was not legal, since it had to be negotiated. Both aspects prevented, until now, signing an agreement.
But that direct salary increase on the payroll of the doctors has been left behind this Tuesday. The final agreement of the union and Salut goes through two big packages. The first, a negotiating table to generate a dialogue between the department and the doctors and deal with issues of “organization” and “care overload”. “This table is set in motion immediately, in the coming days, and in its early days it will meet at least biweekly”, Lleonart highlighted.
The second package are those “urgent measures” that include the improvement of accessibility or debureaucratization, among others. “These urgent measures will allow decrease, For example, him bulk of overtime”, For his part, the ‘conseller’ of Health, Manel Balcells, who has called off the strike due to the “citizen affectation” what did it mean
Without details
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However, neither the union nor the ‘conseller’ have specified the details of all these measures. Neither party has explained how it will be achieved. that improvement in accessibility, that debureaucratization or that limit in the agendas. These are issues, they say, that will be unraveled in that negotiating table. But, according to Balcells, the agreement reached goes “much further” and will allow address the “transformation” of the health system how “necessary” it is.
And it is necessary above all because of the lack of professionals, that will be more pressing in the coming years, when only in Catalonia about 9,000 doctors will retire for which there is no replacement.