Hungarian doctors are staying in the country, but have nowhere to work

The Hungarian National welfare system is struggling after Gábor Zombor, Minister of State for Health, has resigned. The State Secretariat for Healthcare has still not submitted its proposals for dividing the medical specialists regionally. As there is no specific law, the hospitals of Budapest are full of candidates – there’s 500 of them and there’s only 300 places – but there’s practically no one in the rural areas.

Gábor Zombor, Minister of State for Health, announced in early July that practitioners will not have contracts with a concrete hospital but will become public servants of The Health Registration and Training Centre and their wages will be provided by the central government budget.

With the introduction of this new act a rookie practitioner’s gross income rose to 205 320 HUF, and those who have a scholarship may receive a 200 – 100 000 HUF monthly bonus, depending on their specialisations. With the budget paying, hospitals have a 3-5 billion HUF plus.

This new form of employment is extremely popular among the newcomers – while there were only 420 candidates in the specialized training in 2010, the institutes would be able to give work to 1167 fresh graduates in 2015.

The quotas were announced regionally and were regulated by laws. However, most graduates intend to work in the capital, and the Semmelweis University has applied to The State Secretariat for Healthcare in order to employ 200 practitioners; it means that the remaining dozen and half institutes should provide 100 more places. Most hospitals in Budapest have been constantly interviewing possible candidates, but they cannot employ them until the quotas are rearranged.