The Col•legi de Metges de Barcelona (COMB), which integrates nearly 40,000 professionals, will create a platform together with the Pimec employer’s association so that self-employed physicians who practice in the private sector can collectively negotiate their working conditions with insurance companies. and hospital groups.
At the end of January, the two institutions will present the creation of an independent professional association that will represent private doctors in collective bargaining. This grouping has been possible since October, when the National Competition Markets Commission (CNMC) confirmed that the European Commission’s guidelines on the working conditions of self-employed workers are applicable to doctors who do not have employees. Thus, they have the right to organize to negotiate their conditions without this implying infringement of competition law.
The Col•legi de Metges states in a statement that, in recent years, self-employed doctors in the private sector “have seen how the lack of updating their fees has not only made their activity precarious, but also threatens the quality of care in the sector. of private medicine.”
The current regulations do not enable professional associations to act on behalf of members in collective negotiations. Hence, COMB has promoted the alliance with Pimec, an entity with extensive experience in collective bargaining on behalf of small and medium-sized companies and self-employed professionals.
The COMB assures that the private medicine sector has experienced in recent years a process of concentration of supply that has given rise to “large differences between the negotiating power held, on their part, by insurance entities and hospital groups and, on the other hand, individual professionals.” This group of self-employed workers is subject to the conditions set by the party that is in a dominant position, “and to the extent that these conditions imply more precariousness for the professional, it also becomes more difficult to guarantee the correct provision of the service and, therefore, therefore, the quality of care.”
Prior to the CNMC resolution, insurance companies and hospital groups had refused to negotiate collectively with doctors, arguing that this would violate competition law.
For years there has been no dialogue between professionals and insurers, in the midst of a price war by companies that are “selling unworthy policies to citizens and paying unworthy doctors,” the president of COMB denounced in statements to La Vanguardia. , Jaume Padrós. “There are companies that are paying less than 10 euros per medical act, and this is unsustainable,” he deepened.
Padrós expressed his satisfaction with the CNMC ruling, which he described as a great victory: “It is a turning point that affects a significant percentage of the doctors in Catalonia (about 10,000 self-employed in the Barcelona area) and allows continue working to make it extendable to the rest. We need doctors to be able to be grouped to defend their interests.”
The Professional Medical Union (Unipromel) estimates that in Spanish private healthcare there are about 250,000 professionals who work as self-employed, of which 40,000 are doctors, 95% of the professionals who work for private healthcare. They have been struggling for years to update the consultation rates they receive from insurers.