The enormous salaries earned by Civic Coalition (KO) councillor Dawid Kacprzyk at Warsaw’s South Hospital, along with further media reports on physicians’ earnings and the Health Ministry’s latest proposals, have reignited the debate over doctors’ pay in Poland. Fuel was added to the fire by a social media post from well-known physician Bartosz Fiałek. “Let me put it gently—you are not helping,” replied Jakub Kosikowski, spokesperson for the Polish Supreme Medical Chamber (Naczelna Izba Lekarska, NIL).
A total of more than PLN 1.5 million—this is how much 28-year-old physician without specialist qualifications Dawid Kacprzyk earned over the course of a year at Warsaw South Hospital, where he served as the coordinator of the hospital’s Emergency Department (SOR). The enormous sum earned by the young doctor triggered a wave of media reports about physicians’ salaries across different regions of Poland.
In the Greater Poland region, five doctors each earned more than PLN 2 million annually. In Włocławek, the highest-paid physician received PLN 1.47 million in a single year. A group of neurosurgeons reportedly earned PLN 300,000 in a single day under contracts with hospitals.
The hospital scandal has damaged the image of the ruling coalition and weakened public support for it, prompting the government to respond, although many commentators regard the proposed measures as largely symbolic. This week, Health Minister Jolanta Sobierańska-Grenda presented a package of proposed changes to the healthcare system. However, the medical community reacted rather negatively, arguing that the proposals offered nothing that had not already been discussed previously.
Among the announced measures, Sobierańska-Grenda proposed introducing a cap on physicians’ remuneration of PLN 240 per hour, as well as limiting hospital spending on doctors’ salaries to 60 percent of a hospital’s total budget.
Supreme Medical Chamber: An Attempt to Draw Doctors Into Wage Negotiations
“The ministry has focused on putting out fires, including those related to its public image. That is why there is such a strong emphasis on discussing doctors’ salaries, even though we expected a coherent strategy for reforming the entire healthcare system. Highlighting individual salary figures is an attempt to draw our profession into wage negotiations, whereas the real problems facing patients, the healthcare system, and physicians lie elsewhere. We want to discuss access to healthcare services and the impact the minister’s proposals will have on the entire system,” Łukasz Jankowski, President of the Supreme Medical Chamber, said in an interview with Wirtualna Polska.
He added that surveys conducted among physicians indicate that “a fair salary for a specialist employed full-time is equivalent to three times the national average wage.”
Fiałek: “That Comes to PLN 80 Per Patient”
Bartosz Fiałek, a physician well known on social media, also weighed in on the heated debate over doctors’ earnings. His post sparked considerable controversy, including within the medical community itself.
“If you see three patients per hour at a medical facility for PLN 240 per hour, that comes to PLN 80 per patient, while private practice pays around PLN 200–300 per patient, and across the Oder River it’s about €100 per patient. (…) Under such a proposal, a surgeon will perform one gallbladder operation during a working day instead of four—why do more? It’s greater risk, greater responsibility, more work, and the pay remains exactly the same,” Fiałek wrote.
His post drew a response from Jakub Kosikowski, spokesperson for the Supreme Medical Chamber, who argued that Fiałek’s comments were doing more harm than good.
“I think some people need to cool their heads. People may not understand economics, but some have apparently forgotten what salaries in Poland actually look like,” Kosikowski said.