In Mykolaiv, Tymoshenko talked about the plans of the parliamentary commission to increase the salaries of doctors and finance hospitals

During her visit to Mykolaiv, which took place on December 28, Yulia Tymoshenko, the head of the parliamentary temporary investigative commission (PTI) on the conditions of treatment of wounded soldiers, spoke about the important changes that await the hospitals that provide medical assistance to servicemen in early 2024. These steps relate to financing, food and salary issues, writes NikVesti.

While in Mykolaiv, Yuliia Tymoshenko, in particular, met with the doctors of city hospital No. 5 in the Korabelnyi district of the city.

Yuliia Tymoshenko talks with doctors in Mykolaiv, photo by Serhii Krasivskyi

«We have a special investigative group in the Verkhovna Rada, but it is investigative in the positive sense of the word. We have already been working for two months in order to be able to offer a completely new approach for such hospitals that treat the wounded from January 1,» said Yuliia Tymoshenko.

One of the key initiatives is the funding review, where higher conversion rates will be introduced for same-day surgery packages. This applies not only to military personnel, but also to civilian patients, which will provide significantly more financial resources.

«The second is nutrition. Strictly speaking, it goes through NHSU. And because of the Ministry of Defense, they pay about 4 times more for one patient for food, for a military one. We have now reviewed these orders. In January, we will settle the contractual campaign, there will be a completely different approach,» she added.

It is also planned to revise the salary fund, introduce indexation within two years, and increase pay for junior medical personnel, drivers of medical transport and non-medical personnel. This is aimed at stimulating and supporting specialists working in hospitals specialized in providing medical care to wounded servicemen.

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According to Tymoshenko, these initiatives will help ensure the appropriate level of medical care for those who became victims of war events and will improve the working conditions of medical facilities that treat the wounded.

What about medicine in Mykolaiv

Read also: Heroes of the rear: «ambulance» medics told how they worked in Mykolaiv under fire

We will remind you that in 2023, Mykolaiv hospitals were replenished with 104 intern doctors, but this did not solve the issue of personnel shortage in the city's medical sector.

It is worth noting that only recently, at the end of November, the doctors of the Mykolaiv Emergency Hospital announced that the city's health care management, together with the head doctor of the institution, plan to reduce the medical staff and one of the surgical departments. The doctors appealed to the head of the regional state administration, Vitaly Kim, with a request to save the medical institution and its staff.

In September, NikVesti reported that Oleksandr Demianov, the head of the City Emergency Hospital of the Mykolayiv City Council, signed an order to reduce the number of employees, due to the reduction of the funding of the institution by the National Health Service of Ukraine.

On March 31, 2023 , there was a similar reduction of doctors and nurses, however, the chief doctor Oleksandr Demianov and the deputy head of Mykolayiv RMA Yurii Hranaturov claimed that it will affect only empty vacancies.

This turned out to be untrue, after which Vitalii Kim, the head of Mykolayiv RMA, made a speech and accused his team of having «been told one thing, but it turned out the other way around». After that, Vitalii Kim stated at a session of the Mykolaiv City Council that they were tasked not only with compensating for the lost medical staff, but also with finding new doctors that Mykolaiv needed. At the same time, Yurii Hranaturov said that the head of RMA, Vitalii Kim, intends to find a state subsidy for the payment of salaries to the doctors of the emergency medical care hospital.

Inadequate condition of hospitals

We will remind that after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized the condition of the wards in the Mykolaiv Regional Children's Hospital, they started repairing the surgical department and installed air conditioners in eight wards.

After this incident, the head of Mykolayiv RMA Vitalii Kim drew attention to the low speed of work of the temporary commission of the regional council on the inspection of medical institutions. He also called on the residents of Mykolaiv to send complaints and suggestions regarding changes in the medical system to e-mail, so that these appeals will be considered by the appropriate group. After anonymous complaints, Vitalii Kim announced the dismissal of the chief doctors of the medical facilities if he became convinced of their incompetence.

Corruption in hospitals

For the second time, the head of RMA changed this situation a month later and once again announced personnel changes. The reason for this was a different situation in the medical field of the region: the law enforcement officers exposed a large-scale scheme of making money on evasions in the Mykolaiv regional mental hospital.

After that, the court ordered a preventive measure against the policeman who was responsible for searching for evaders. However, the suspicion and the selection of a preventive measure have not yet been served on the doctors who participated in the scheme of illegal earnings, in particular on the chief doctor Viktor Taran.

Reacting to this situation, the head of the Mykolayiv RMA for the medical field, Yuriii Hranaturov, said that the exposed scheme in the regional mental health center is an isolated case in the medical field of the region. He believes that the RMA health care department is not responsible for the activities of the chief physician.

At the same time, Yurii Hranaturov announced that the SBI will conduct an additional inspection at the regional mental health center to find out whether other doctors are involved in the corrupt scheme of making money on evasion.

Later it became known that the acting director of the Mykolaiv Regional Center for Mental Health, Victor Taran, who, according to the SBI, organized the scheme for the production of certificates for evaders, will remain in his post.

Reduction of doctors

However, these two cases are not the only ones in the medical field of Mykolaiv Oblast. As early as March 31, 2023, the editorial office of NikVesti received and published a copy of the order of the chief doctor of the emergency medical hospital, Oleksandr Demianov, on the reduction of the number of employees. According to him, this decision is related to underfunding: this year the hospital received only 91 million hryvnias from the National Health Service, while last year it received 128 million hryvnias.

In response to this publication, officials began to declare en masse that this decision will not affect working doctors, as it only applies to vacancies. At the same time, the health care department assured that the reduction will not affect the quality of service, and the military governor explained this by reforms in medicine.

However, NikVesti conducted its own investigation and found out that such assurances turned out to be false. It turned out that the hospital staff faced a choice: reduce the number of doctors or reduce wages. Thus, the medical staff of the hospital, which treated severely wounded people around the clock in the first months of the war, had to agree to a 25% cut in wages. This reduction creates a number of problems, in particular, 6 neurosurgeons out of 12 are left to work in neurosurgery. At the same time, not all of them have the right to operate independently.

However, in April it became known that the orders for the transfer of surgeons to 0.75 rates were canceled in the Mykolaiv Emergency Hospital.