site.btaUPDATED National Council for Tripartite Cooperation Fails to Agree on Draft Decree on Territorial Expert Medical Commissions

The National Council for Tripartite Cooperation (NCTC) did not reach an agreement on the Draft Decree of the Council of Ministers on the amendment and supplement to the regulations on the structure and organization of the work of the medical expertise bodies and the regional medical expertise registries.

The amendments are aimed at solving the problem of delays in the medical expertise on permanently reduced working capacity/type and degree of disability carried out by the territorial expert medical commissions (TEMC). Another part of the proposals provides for regulating the obligation of the Regional Health Inspectorates to notify persons ex officio of the need for regular re-certification no later than 4 months before the expiry of the period of permanently reduced working capacity/type and degree of disability specified in the expert decision.

The main arguments against included concern about whether municipal hospitals would have the capacity to cope with the obligations that the draft decree would impose on them; that the good intentions, which were undoubtedly in the direction of creating conditions for people not to wait for months and years for the ruling of the expert commissions, could remain only on paper due to the fact that everyone was aware of the staffing of the system, Asya Goneva of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB) noted. “In over 60 pages of reasons, nowhere did we see how objectivity is guaranteed for the documentation on which the commissions will rule. We did not see how the responsibility is traced along the whole chain from the medical persons who propose, prepare and secure the whole set of documents,” said Ivelin Zhelyazkov of BICA and CITUB.

Vice President of the Podkrepa Confederation of Labour Ioanis Parteniotis expressed support for the proposals.

Deputy Prime Minister and Social Minister Lazar Lazarov said that what was done was not to solve all the problems, but to try to speed up the procedures.

What has been proposed focuses on the principles that currently work, he said, adding that the goal is to have all expert commissions follow the rules.