Cancellation of bonus pay for work during Covid-19 pandemic in the post-pandemic period will be a very tough issue and the healthcare sector should start thinking about it now, says P.Stradins Clinical University Hospital’s chairman of the board Rinalds Muciņš.
According to him, the bonus pay equal to 100% is paid to medical workers for working with Covid-19 patients. This benefit has existed for two years, and for many people employed in the healthcare sector it has become part of their base wage. Cancellation of bonus pay, according to the head of the hospital, could become something akin to ‘moral hangover’ and may be rather heavy.
He says one way out the wage reform initiated during the term of then the Minister of Health Ilze Viņķele. However, no consequent steps towards this reform’s implementation have been made so far.
These two years of the pandemic have been full of challenges. One the one hand, Muciņš says his hospital has attracted major investments and has caught the attention of a large portion of Latvia’s society. The reason is because the openness of the economy and people’s habits have relied on hospitals these two years, and this was a major burden of responsibility this whole time. On the other hand, all this time the hospital’s operations have been rather jerky.
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Muciņš said during this time new structural units were opened and others were closed. «We did limit operations at some point and then expanded patient admission as much as possible later on,» the manager of the hospital explained.
According to him, the hospital has maintained its mission in assisting patients and has preserved its ability to react and flexibly adapt to new situations.
Hospital manager: cancelling Covid-19 bonus pay may cause «moral hangover» for medical workers
