At yesterday’s meeting of the Executive Board of the Croatian Association of Counties, the new Regulation on Specialist Training for Medical Doctors was discussed, which significantly changes the obligations of specialist doctors and specialists towards the institution that sends them for specialization, to the detriment of the institution.
According to the amendments to the Regulation that came into effect on July 16, the gross salary of the medical doctor is not included in the costs of specialization. Until the adoption of these amendments, if a doctor decided to terminate the contract before the end of the specialization, they had to cover the following costs of specialization: costs of the main mentor, mentor, and commentator, costs of the healthcare institution where the specialist training is conducted, costs of postgraduate specialist studies, costs of the final and specialist exam, costs of the booklet on the specialist training of medical doctors, costs of the work diary of the medical doctor in specialist training, and the cost of the doctor’s gross salary. Considering that the salary represents the largest item in the costs of specialization, it will now be much easier for doctors to leave the institution as they will not have to pay large penalties for early contract termination.
“According to some associations and professional organizations, the Regulation on Amendments and Supplements to the Regulation on Specialist Training for Medical Doctors is legally questionable and unconstitutional. The retroactive application is also being questioned, which is unusual for this type of act. In addition, there is a serious threat that such amended regulations will harm county hospitals of which we are founders. For example, the projected costs that would arise related to Karlovac, Brod-Posavina, or Vukovar-Srijem County amount to 80 to 100 million kuna individually per county,” emphasized the president of the Croatian Association of Counties and Šibenik-Knin County Governor Goran Pauk.
