The Government processes the reform of the Framework Statute of health personnel despite medical rejection

The Council of Ministers plans to give the green light to the processing in the Cortes of the preliminary draft Law of the Framework Statute of the statutory personnel of health services only three months after its first review. On June 2, the Ministry of Mónica García gave the starting signal for the processing of a comprehensive reform that updates a regulatory framework that is more than two decades old.

While García's Ministry defends this step, however, this new text confronts more than 177,000 doctors who have been showing their rejection since January through five weeks of national strike.

From Health they state that the "discord" reform aims to adapt the regulation of statutory personnel to the current reality of the National Health System (SNS), reinforcing stability in employment, improving working conditions and favoring more efficient planning of human resources.

With this law, all the major health projects of the Ministry of Health are now in the hands of the Cortes: the updating of the tobacco regulations, the new medicines law, the shielding of public management and integrity of the National Health System and the reform of the Framework Statute.

All of them have several points in common, beyond depending on the cabals of Congress and the short processing time at the end of the legislature: they are necessary reforms that update processes and lay the foundations for a Healthcare of the 21st century.

What will the approved text that goes to the Cortes include?

Once the text is approved - which would mean that it will have passed through the Cortes before the end of the legislature, which has one year remaining - the norm establishes a period of five years for the health services to make the necessary organizational adaptations regarding working hours. In addition, the creation of a State Registry of Statutory Personnel is planned for the coordinated planning of human resources in the National Health System.

There are three key axes that focus the changes, as stated by Health: the processes of job insertion, the regulation of schedules and the organization of work and the classification of personnel. On the one hand, the standard seeks to eliminate uncertainty in selection processes and reinforce stability in healthcare employment. To this end, it limits the duration of temporary appointments in vacant positions and establishes the obligation to convene selective processes with a maximum periodicity of two years.

One of the blocks of the reform that has generated the most controversy is the one that regulates schedules and guards. The changes introduced, as defended by the Ministry of Mónica García, seek to avoid excessive workload. However, doctors point out that all of this is conditioned by the phrase "due to the needs of the service", which supports any exception to the norm.