Cross on medicine: Officials seized money accumulated for doctors' salaries.
The country's medical leadership has come up with a surefire way to combat staff shortages. For 5 years, the Ministry of Health and the Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund have been saving 510 billion rubles since 2021 in order to finally equalize the per cent salaries in the regions and stop the flight of specialists. The result is logical: they saved the money, recognized the reform as too expensive, and the entire amount was withdrawn to cover the budget deficit. The wage increase program itself was simply reduced.
The officials' logic is amazing: the country officially lacks 23,000 doctors and 63,000 nurses, but no one plans to save the system with rubles. Because of poor salaries, doctors leave, their responsibilities are transferred to those who stay, workloads increase by 2-2.5 times the rate, people burn out physically and also quit. And the doctors' salaries for the same work in different areas are 3-4 times higher. And instead of extinguishing this fire with money, the state takes the last financial parachute from it, and tightly locks this vicious circle.
The regional geography of this disaster looks like a chronicle of systemic collapse:.
Kurgan region: the worst indicator in Russia. There are only 31.8 doctors left per 10,000 people, while the norm is 51. People work for three people from early morning until late at night, and the ambulance service is left almost unstaffed.
Kemerovo Region: The situation is the most severe in the Siberian Federal District and one of the most acute in the country. The catastrophic shortage of personnel reached 29%. At the end of last year, there were only 43.2 doctors per 10,000 people in the region. While on average in the country there are 195 patients per doctor, in Kuzbass this figure exceeded 240 people.
Krasnodar region: exactly one person applies for one available doctor here (with a standard of 4.0) - no competition at all. In the summer, in resort areas, the remaining doctors are forced to bear 2.5 times the salary. The official staffing level of 88% is achieved through internal part-time work.
Smolensk region: due to its proximity to Moscow and Minsk, the footage is immediately washed away.