site.btaMedical Association Chair Proposes Linking Doctors' Pay to National Average Wage

Doctor Ivan Madzharov, Chair of the Bulgarian Medical Association (BMA), suggested on Monday that the base pay of medical professionals should be pegged to the national average wage. He made this proposal at a forum discussing potential solutions for medical tourism in Bulgaria.

Madzharov highlighted that this approach is already used for determining teachers' salaries, which allows for better financial planning. BMA insists that the Health Insurance Act should require any entity working with the National Health Insurance Fund to guarantee the national minimum wage, linking it not to the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), but to the national average wage.

Madzharov highlighted the issue of hospitals not providing basic salaries despite receiving over a billion BGN in funding. At BGN 2,000 for doctors without specialty, BGN 1,500 for nurses and BGN 910 for paramedics, he warned that hospitals may have to limit services based on their financial capacity and those failing to meet wage thresholds could face staff shortages. The responsibility to resolve these issues falls on municipalities for municipal hospitals, and on the Minister of Health for state-run hospitals, he added further.

These salaries were set in the previous CBA that expired earlier this year, with the signing of a new CBA still pending. A meeting between employers, trade unions and the caretaker Minister of Health Galya Kondeva will take place later on Monday. In the past week, Doctor Kondeva shared with BTA that the Ministry's experts proposed maintaining the current base pay levels for at least another year.