Budget shortfall causes crisis at Pécs hospital

Some individual in Pécs requiring surgery will have to wait until next month, as the main hospital in the southern Hungarian capital has already used up this month's budget, reports hirszerzo.hu.

According to Lajos Kollár, manager of the Pécs Clinical Center, the hospital is required to operate inside of its monthly budget in all cases involving non-urgent procedures.

This, he said has led to the postponement of numerous operations not classified as "urgent," including the scheduled knee surgery for a 78-year-old woman. Besides these delays, waiting times have been lengthened in all of the hospital's various clinics.

The funding shortfall has created other serious problems for the hospital. Out of the 18 trauma specialists on staff at the center, five recently left due to what they said were insufficiently low salaries. According to the portal, the salary of such a traumatologist in Pécs is slightly more than Ft 200,000 (€800) per month, while the same specialists could earn three times as much in the hospital in another town.

Meanwhile, according to a report on Klubrádió, as the Pécs hospital's trauma specialists are constantly receiving offers from other public and private hospitals, there is a possibility that the department could collapse by the summer.

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