Health workers in small towns and villages began to receive the first additional payments from the federal budget

Health workers in small towns and villages have already begun to receive the first additional payments from the federal budget, announced by Vladimir Putin just a month and a half ago. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova announced this at a meeting with the president. Despite the launch of the mechanism, specialized trade unions believe that it should be expanded – in particular, ambulance workers were not included in the number of recipients of additional payments.

On Thursday, at a meeting between Vladimir Putin and the government, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova announced that health workers have already begun to receive the first additional payments from the federal budget. Let us recall that in mid-February the president proposed to increase the amount of monthly payments for doctors working in small towns and rural areas starting from March 1, 2024. Thus, in cities with a population of 50–100 thousand people, doctors will receive an additional 29 thousand rubles, nursing staff – 13 thousand rubles. In smaller settlements, the additional payment for doctors will be 50 thousand rubles, for other health workers – 30 thousand rubles. These funds will be formalized as a special social payment, which the federal budget began paying to most primary care workers in 2023. Now its size ranges from 4.5 thousand to 18.5 thousand rubles. It was promised to accrue new payments to doctors in April – retroactively for March.

As Tatyana Golikova reported, the Ministry of Health is now creating registers of specialists who are entitled to payments. “The most active were medical organizations that are located in settlements with a population of up to 50 thousand people. There are already corresponding registers for more than 13 thousand people,” explained the Deputy Prime Minister. Medical organizations from settlements in the category from 50 thousand to 100 thousand people have so far presented registers for 700 people. “But this work continues, since payments are being made throughout April,” she added.

Despite the start of payments, industry trade unions consider it possible to further discuss their parameters. The head of the Action trade union, Andrei Konoval, believes that new additional payments should be introduced for ambulance workers. “How can you continue to pay them only 7 thousand rubles. for the hardest work, when their colleagues are given 30-50 thousand rubles? We have already received at least 50 video messages from ambulance teams in dozens of regions. People don’t understand where there is such a difference in payments, and are ready to retrain and move to other positions in order to start receiving them,” says the head of the trade union. According to him, this week the trade union sent the government proposals to increase additional payments for ambulance paramedics in small towns to 30 thousand, for doctors – to 50 thousand.

Let us note that earlier the trade union of healthcare workers (part of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of the Russian Federation) made the same proposal. “We also see a lot of calls from ambulance teams. So far we have not received a response from the government,” says Mikhail Androchnikov, adviser to the head of the trade union.

According to the Telegram channel “Medical Russia”, on April 3, the government sent a letter signed by Tatyana Golikova to the heads of regions with instructions to analyze the salaries of ambulance crews and check them for compliance with the new requirements for the share of salaries in the payment structure (for more details, see “Kommersant” dated 15 February). Let us remind you that Vladimir Putin also promised to increase this share to 50%. If the regions comply with the requirement, then the salaries of ambulance workers may increase – depending on the budget capabilities of the subjects, since this should be done at their expense. Apparently, such additional payments are unlikely to reach the federal level.

Anastasia Manuilova