Company care
By : Anna Kocinska
Private medical firms are reaping huge profits as companies use medical cover as sweeteners to attract new staff. But the move is dealing another blow to the country's beleaguered public health service.
"Potential employees do ask about additional medical services when negotiating their contracts," said Agata Buczynska, human resources manager at Ernst&Young. "It's become an important element of an employment contract. It means additional costs for an employer, but the low quality of public health services in Poland make private services indispensable. I think this kind of benefit has become a permanent element of remuneration."
At Ernst&Young, an employee's medical services package depends on their position within the company. While most of the company's employees are registered with non-public medical centers, high-ranking partners can expect deep discounts on dental services at private clinics. "It's true that the unemployment rate has gone up significantly and some employers would say that even without special benefits people would join their company," Buczynska said. "But, in particular, foreign companies entering the Polish market have to remember that if they want to attract good employees they need to be competitive with the level of benefits they can provide."
As a result, private medical institutions are booming.
Denmark-based medical company Falck, which set up in Poland in 1991, has 45,000 corporate clients in Warsaw, Gdansk, Poznan, Szczecin, Wroclaw, Katowice and Krakow.
"Our customer base is still in Warsaw, but recently we have branched out into smaller towns around the capital," said Martyna Barycka, sales director at Falck.
Six-year-old Medicover, a private international medical-care firm with operations in Poland, Romania, Hungary and Estonia, has 60,000 corporate clients across the country. "Over the last three years we have seen a 30-34% yearly growth in the number of corporate clients," said Marcin Malinowski, PR manager at Medicover. "Because there are many foreign companies on the Polish market that are not only the leaders in their sector but are also good at human resources management, I can see a trend among employees to become more aware of what they can expect of their employer."
According to Malinowski, many companies also buy medical services packages for their workers' families. Medicover, for example, offers several packages at a monthly rate of zl. 110-zl. 430 per person. "Golden cards (zl. 430) are often bought by even smaller companies, such as law firms or ad agencies," he said. "All over the world the best employers offer medical services that cannot normally be obtained under health insurance," Buczynska added.
But Poland has a long way to go before it can compare with Western labor markets.
Until the mid-1990s, most large state-owned companies had their own in-house medical centers financed by treasury coffers. "They (companies) were used to providing such services to their employees for free and then they were suddenly deprived of that," said Teresa Kudas, manager of Poznan-based Centrum Medycyny Pracy, an institute that monitors medical services provided by employers.
When the healthcare system was overhauled in 1999, financing of in-house medical centers at public companies was halted. The revamped sector envisioned transforming the cash-strapped, mostly public system into a new scheme that would combine public and private health services. Consequently, companies' in-house medical centers were too expensive to be included in the system's 17 new Patients' Funds, which were set up to contract medical services on a regional basis.
Employers, which had previously relied on publicly financed medical centers, were now required to pay for healthcare services, such as annual medical tests for employees, from their own pockets.
"Today, employers can hire private and public medical institutions to conduct obligatory (according to the Polish Labor Code) periodic tests," Kudas said. "Many employers do no more than provide such basic tests. They still think the remaining healthcare services should be provided by the Patients' Funds system."
That trend may be slowly changing, though.
According to surveys conducted last year by the Lodz-based Instytut Medycyny Pracy, 54% of businesses surveyed began purchasing additional medical services for their employees.
"But it all depends on the economic situation of the country," Kudas said. "I'm not a pessimist, but I don't think I will live long enough to see additional healthcare benefits being part of all employment contracts in Poland."
