The Slovenia Times

Slovenian doctors on strike, activities to be stepped up

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While the action started out without causing major disruptions, problems are expected to emerge soon.

The action is not a traditional strike, instead doctors decided to strictly stick to a 40-hour work week, which is expected to extend the already long waiting times for non-urgent surgeries and examinations.

So far no major disturbances have been reported, as hospital managers had prepared for the strike, mostly by rescheduling patient appointments. But this will mean problems further down the line.

The head of the FIDES trade union at the UKC Ljubljana hospital, Milenko Stanković, said there would be no major changes for the patients the first week into the strike. Problems will start next week, when extra weekend hours start piling up.

The head of the Ljubljana Community Health Centre, Rudi Dolšak said that if the strike went on for weeks, patients would start piling up at community health centres and emergency units, which could lead to the system collapsing.

The strike was being carried out in 13 community health centres and 11 hospitals, with most of them opting for rescheduling to cope for now. It remained unclear today whether private practitioners with licences for public services would join in as well.

Despite the likely disruptions, doctors are determined to continue, billing the strike as a much needed chance to turn around the ailing healthcare system. "Nothing is happening in healthcare at the present even as the system gradually sinks," FIDES president Konrad Kuštrin said.

Health Minister Milojka Kolar Celarc said the strike was unnecessary given that significant progress had been made, but her claim was dismissed by Kuštrin, who accused the government of having been insincere in the negotiations.

"We have nothing against members of the government negotiating group, but the government and the Health Ministry have been negotiating insincerely," he said.

FIDES has been endorsed in the strike activities by Praktikum, a union representing general practitioners, though it is not entirely clear whether Praktikum members are also on strike.

The former does not disclose the number of members, while the latter has about 550. There are about 5,000 doctors in Slovenia and about 1,300 dentists.

The two unions have also been endorsed by the Doctors' Association and the Medical Chamber, with the latter saying the strike would show "a yawning gap between political illusion and the reality of Slovenian healthcare".

It said such a strike would not cause problems in a good system, but Slovenia's risked collapsing as it had relied on the "systematic violation of European standards".

The strike was announced in early October and called yesterday after talks with the government collapsed.

Doctors have been demanding new workload standards that they had enshrined in the 2008 Blue Book, most notably a reduction in the number of doctors per general practitioner.

Pay-wise, they want to re-establish the roughly 3:1 ratio between doctors' pay and average salary, up from 1.9:1 at the moment, and the possibility of climbing above the current maximum bracket in the public sector pay system.

A FIDES executive body will meet on Friday to determine whether to step up the strike activities. Kuštrin said this would mean doctors would perform only services determined as the minimum scope of care by law.

These include treating emergency cases, such as pregnant women, children and the elderly, and operating on cancer patients. All other non-urgent treatment would be postponed.

This is the biggest doctors strike since 2010, when over 3,500 doctors refused to work overtime for ten days.

Doctors took similar action in 2002, when for two weeks they worked only 40 hours per week plus 10 hours of extra time until they secured higher overtime pay.

The biggest doctors' strike was in 1996, when only emergency procedures were performed for three weeks. At the time doctors managed to secure significantly higher pay.

The latest strike could also have political reverberations given the health minister's precarious position due to her failure to draw up health reform bills fast enough.

Prime Minister Miro Cerar voiced the hope that "we will get to the point where the strike can be ended as soon as possible," noting that five of the eight doctors demands had already been agreed on.

"I wish the trade union makes reasonable demands while I'm also also encouraging the minister to find solutions," he said.

But coalition parties were critical of doctors today, with all coalition partners saying that the strike is unwarranted.

The opposition United Left (ZL) meanwhile accused the doctors of "striking for privilege", while New Slovenia (NSi) said the strike showed the gravity of the problems in the healthcare sector.

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