Rural doctors to take case to finance minister

Yesterday, the RDS shunned the meeting held by the Public Health Ministry on the issue.
“We believe any discussion with the Public Health Ministry will be useless,” Dr Arak Wongworachart said on behalf of the RDS.
The ministry was assigned the job of concluding the plan for the new payment scheme and submitting it to a committee chaired by Kittiratt. The committee is in charge of reviewing the issue, before it is submitted to the Cabinet next week.
Under the new payment scheme, many rural doctors will be losing part, if not all, of their special monthly allowance. The RDS does not believe the new scheme is fair and is angry that the Public Health Ministry has been pushing for it.
Under the new initiative, funds earmarked for doctors, pharmacists, dentists and nurses in rural areas will be used to boost the earnings of medical workers who have been working hard under the Pay-for-Performance concept. Arak said it would be difficult to evaluate everybody’s performance as some doctors spent just one minute with a patient, while others spent longer. “If the Cabinet goes ahead with this concept, we may take our petition to the Administrative Court,” he said.