How much hospital directors earn in Poland, and what a pay chimney is.

A pay chimney (Polish komin płacowy) is the pay of one person that is glaringly higher than everyone else’s. In public hospitals it is limited by an act commonly known as the “chimney act” (ustawa kominowa) — but only in one place: the salary of the person who runs the hospital. The same person usually also has to show their income every year in an asset declaration. A doctor who bills the hospital as a business is subject neither to the ceiling nor to the duty of disclosure — whatever the amount (see Contract or employment).

We collected eight cases of hospital directors and chief executives from 2024–2025 that the media described on the basis of asset declarations and in which the source gives the amounts. We do not give names: we are interested in the mechanism, not in individuals. A high amount is not in itself an abuse — we set out figures from public documents and make no allegations.

Pay chimneys and the chimney act

The Polish name is a picture. If you set the pay of everyone in one institution side by side, most of it will sit at a similar height, like the slope of a roof. Pay that is many times higher than the rest sticks up above it like a chimney. A chimney becomes a public matter when the pay is financed by the taxpayer or a public payer.

The Act of 3 March 2000 on the remuneration of persons managing certain legal entities does not concern the pay of all employees. It sets an upper limit on the pay of the people who manage an entity — as a multiple of the average monthly wage in the enterprise sector, excluding bonuses paid out of profit, in the fourth quarter of the previous year, as announced by the president of Statistics Poland (GUS).¹ For heads of independent public healthcare facilities (SPZOZ) the ceiling is six times this base. Other entities have other multipliers in the same act:

Three regimes: who files a declaration and what caps the salary

Hospital management is not subject to a single act. How much they may earn and what can be seen of it depends on the hospital’s legal form and on who owns it.

SPZOZ director. A hospital created by a local government as an SPZOZ is run by a director. The director files an asset declaration under the Act on municipal, county or regional self-government, depending on who created the hospital. Everything is public except the address and location of property, including income from employment, from business activity, from contracts and from a councillor’s allowance, each source separately — the form has a dedicated point for this.²³ That is why the table below shows how much someone received for running the hospital and how much for working as a doctor. This is an annual amount, not a monthly salary. For hospitals run by a minister or a university we have not identified a similar provision.

The 1997 Act on restricting business activity by persons performing public functions prohibits such persons from, among other things, sitting on the management boards of commercial companies and holding more than 10% of the shares in a company.⁴ The Supreme Court confirmed in 2014 (I PK 206/13) that the director of a municipal SPZOZ is a person managing a municipal legal person, so these prohibitions apply.⁵

The salary of an SPZOZ director is set by the body that created the hospital, and the chimney act sets its ceiling. The ceiling does not depend on the hospital’s financial results or on whether the hospital was created by a municipality, county, region, minister or university, and it applies to work or services related to management, whatever the form of the contract.¹ The act also allows the director to be granted an annual bonus. It is granted by the government administration body competent to create the hospital or by the executive body of the local government that created it — at the request of the social council. The bonus limit is three times the director’s own average monthly pay from the previous year, but the provision that sets it lists heads of SPZOZ among the persons covered and does not list SPZOZ themselves among the entities.¹ Whether the limit covers a hospital director does not follow directly from the wording of the act, and we have found no commentary or ruling that settles it.

Chief executive of a local government company. When a hospital operates as a commercial company, it falls outside the chimney act. The chief executive’s salary is set by the 2016 act, which covers companies of the State Treasury and of local governments. The fixed part depends on the size of the company — employment, turnover and assets — and falls within one of five ranges, from 1–3 to 7–15 times the base. The base is the same average wage in the enterprise sector in the fourth quarter of the previous year. The variable part, for meeting management objectives, may reach 50% of the previous year’s base salary, and in listed and the largest companies 100%.⁶ Declarations of the chief executives of such companies also sometimes appear in BIP: the Silesian region publishes separately the declarations of the directors of its units and of the chief executives of companies in which it holds shares.⁷

Chief executive of a State Treasury company. Here the obligation derives from the 1997 act and covers the chief executives and management board members of single-shareholder State Treasury companies and of those in which the state holds more than 50% of the capital or shares. Below that threshold there is no obligation. Konkret24, a fact-checking service of the TVN24 news channel, explained this using the example of Orlen, in which the State Treasury held 27.52% of the shares.⁸ The declaration of the chief executive of a state company goes to the prime minister, and its contents are a legally protected secret unless the filer consents to disclosure.⁴ Transparency of earnings therefore depends on the legal form and the owner, not on whether the money is public.

Eight cases: for management and for medical work

The amounts in the table are annual totals from declarations, as reported by the media. The most important is the first column of amounts: how much of the whole is for running the hospital alone.

Record totals come mainly from medical work, not from running the hospital

Eight cases of hospital directors and chief executives from asset declarations for 2024–2025: pay for management, medical work and other income, total amount, condition of the hospital and sources.

Where and who	For management	Medical work and other	Total	Hospital	Sources
Grójec and Nowe Miasto nad Pilicąchief executive of the hospital company in Grójec since October 2025, since 2026 also acting director of the SPZOZ in Nowe Miasto; practising doctor, 2025	about PLN 161 thousandincome from employment for 2025, including as chief executive (from October) — the sources do not separate management alone; today, according to WP, PLN 22 thousand and PLN 18 thousand a month at the two hospitals	PLN 2.8 millionrevenue from medical practice (income over PLN 2.4 million)	over PLN 3 millionrevenue; income about PLN 2.6 million	both hospitals in debt of about PLN 20 million each (according to the head of the county)	WPrp.pl
Łosicehospital director, 2024	PLN 396.5 thousandabout PLN 33.0 thousand a month	PLN 1.26 millionfor medical services provided to the hospital the director runs	about PLN 1.65 millionexcluding pension	record profits	money.pl
Ostrowiec Świętokrzyskichief director of the hospital, 2024	PLN 1.07 millionthe whole employment contract; the source does not separate management from medical work	not given in the source	at least PLN 1.07 million	loss of PLN 11.7 million in 2025, losses from previous years PLN 55.1 million; auditor: material uncertainty about the hospital’s ability to continue operating	naOSTRO.info (amount)naOSTRO.info (auditor)
Bolesławiechospital director, member of the regional assembly, 2025	PLN 726.6 thousandfrom business activity — hospital management services; about PLN 60.5 thousand a month	PLN 303.5 thousandincluding a councillor’s allowance of PLN 58.5 thousand	PLN 1.03 million	debt of PLN 48.7 million (September 2023, Ministry of Health data)	istotne.pl (amount)bolec.info (debt)
Tychychief executive of the municipal company running the regional hospital, 2024	over PLN 908 thousandabout PLN 75.7 thousand a month	not includedthe source leaves out pension, supervisory boards and other income	not given in the source	not given in the source	ilovetychy.pl
Tomaszów Lubelskihospital director, county councillor, 2025	PLN 324 thousand or about PLN 328 thousandtwo versions in the press (see text); about PLN 27 thousand a month	PLN 522 thousand or PLN 536 thousandfor medical work and on-call duty	PLN 864 thousand	loss of PLN 5.2 million in Q1 2026	money.plInteriaBankier
Działdowohospital director, 2024	PLN 335.6 thousandabout PLN 28.0 thousand a month	PLN 351.1 thousandfrom a medical contract	PLN 686.8 thousand	net loss of PLN 8.4 million in 2025; PLN 9.9 thousand in cash at the end of the year	Nasz Dziennik
Suwałkidirector of the regional hospital, 2025	PLN 505.1 thousandabout PLN 42.1 thousand a month; PLN 305.9 thousand in 2022	not given in the source	not given in the source	debt of PLN 58.7 million at the end of 2024	zero.pl

In the six cases in which pay for management can be separated, it ranged from about PLN 27,000 to about PLN 76,000 a month. In four of them — in Tomaszów Lubelski, Działdowo, Łosice and Suwałki — from PLN 27,000 to PLN 42,000. The two highest management salaries in the compilation are a contract for managing the hospital in Bolesławiec, about PLN 60,500 (≈ €13,700) a month,⁹ and the pay of the chief executive of a municipal company running the regional hospital in Tychy, about PLN 75,700 (≈ €17,200). The latter amount — over PLN 908,000 for 2024 — is, according to ilovetychy.pl, almost four times the statutory maximum pay of the city’s mayor (about PLN 240,000 a year; exactly 3.8 times). The comparison refers to the maximum, not to the pay actually received by the mayor.¹⁰

The highest amount from a single employment contract was declared in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski: PLN 1.07 million (≈ €243,000) for 2024. The source does not split it between running the hospital and medical work.¹¹

Totals above a million zloty come from combining roles:

• Running a hospital and a practice. In Grójec a doctor has been the chief executive of the county company running the hospital since October 2025, and in 2026 also took on the duties of director of the SPZOZ in Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą. In the declaration for 2025 the doctor reported PLN 2.8 million (≈ €636,000) of revenue from an individual medical practice (over PLN 2.4 million of income) and about PLN 161,000 of income from employment, including as chief executive — in total over PLN 3 million of revenue and about PLN 2.6 million of income.¹² In 2025 the doctor was chief executive only for the last quarter, and the sources do not say what part of the PLN 161,000 relates to that role. According to WP, the doctor now receives PLN 22,000 a month for management in Grójec and PLN 18,000 in Nowe Miasto.
• Medical work in one’s own hospital. In Łosice running the hospital brought PLN 396,500 (≈ €90,000) in 2024, and medical services provided to the same hospital PLN 1.26 million. Together almost PLN 1.7 million, not counting a pension.¹³
• Director and on-call duty. In Tomaszów Lubelski the declaration for 2025 showed PLN 864,000 (≈ €196,000) from the hospital.¹⁴ There are two versions of the breakdown. According to Interia and Bankier, it is PLN 324,000 for management and PLN 522,000 for on-call duty — together PLN 846,000, i.e. PLN 18,000 less than the total. According to money.pl, medical work brought PLN 536,000, which leaves about PLN 328,000 for management. We do not combine these versions. In both, most of the amount is medical work. A spokeswoman for the District Labour Inspectorate in Lublin said that combining the two roles must not breach the 11 hours of daily rest, and the National Labour Inspectorate (PIP) announced an inspection.¹⁴
• Director and a medical contract. In Działdowo in 2024 the role of director brought PLN 335,600 (≈ €76,200), and a medical contract PLN 351,100 — together about PLN 57,000 a month.¹⁵

Rules on management pay can concern only part of these amounts — the pay for management. We know the revenue from the practice only because the doctor holds a public office and files a declaration. The same amount for a doctor without such an office would not have to appear in any public document. Nor does the declaration say what part of the revenue from the practice comes from public money and what part from private patients.

In Bolesławiec and Tomaszów Lubelski the directors are also local councillors, and a councillor’s allowance is a separate item in the declaration — in Bolesławiec PLN 58,500 (≈ €13,300) for 2025.⁹ A councillor also files a declaration by virtue of the mandate.² We set out the full annual income of doctors who are councillors in our analysis Doctor-councillors.

High payouts despite losses and debt

Setting a director’s pay beside the hospital’s results does not settle who is responsible for those results. It does show, however, that one does not depend on the other.

• Suwałki. The pay of the director of the regional hospital rose from PLN 305,900 in 2022 to PLN 505,100 (≈ €115,000) in 2025, i.e. by 65%. The regional executive board also granted the director a bonus of PLN 12,200 a month for the first half of 2026, justified by the delivery of projects under the National Recovery Plan (KPO). At the end of 2024 the hospital had PLN 58.7 million (≈ €13.3 million) of debt.¹⁶
• Działdowo. The hospital closed 2025 with a net loss of PLN 8.4 million (≈ €1.91 million). At the end of the year it had PLN 9,880.68 (≈ €2,240) in cash and PLN 20.9 million of payables due, i.e. those whose payment date had passed.¹⁵ The director’s pay in the table refers to 2024.
• Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski. The statutory auditor pointed to material uncertainty about the hospital’s ability to continue operating. The net loss for 2025 was PLN 11.7 million (≈ €2.66 million), and losses from previous years PLN 55.1 million.¹⁷ The director’s pay in the table refers to 2024.
• Bolesławiec. According to Ministry of Health data, the hospital had PLN 48.7 million (≈ €11.1 million) of debt in September 2023.⁹

The rules do not prohibit rewarding the director of a hospital whose debt is growing. The chimney act says that an annual bonus “may be granted” depending on financial results or the performance of other tasks,¹ and a lawyer quoted by Rynek Zdrowia said there is nothing to stop the director of a hospital that is running up debt from receiving it.¹⁸

It also works the other way. The second-largest total in the compilation — almost PLN 1.7 million in Łosice — belongs to a hospital which, according to money.pl, has record profits.¹³ We collect data on the debt of all hospitals in our compilation Hospital debt.

The contract: a chimney without a ceiling

About 73% of specialist doctors work under contracts — as a business or on a contract of mandate¹⁹ — and this is where the highest amounts in healthcare are paid. A doctor who bills the hospital in this way is not a managing person under the chimney act. What the doctor receives is revenue from a civil-law contract, not a manager’s pay, so the act does not cover it — however high it is. Not every contract creates a chimney: in the typology of Prof. Urszula Demkow, a former deputy minister of health, pay chimneys are created above all by profit-based contracts in lucrative fields.²⁰ We describe six contract models in Contract or employment.

In 2025 the hospital in Kalisz showed what a dispute about a pay chimney looks like without a figure. After an inspection by the Marshal’s Office (the regional government office) in Poznań and an analysis by the new management, which took over the hospital on 1 July 2025, it emerged that the hospital owed nurses about PLN 37 million (≈ €8.4 million), including interest, in pay for their specialisations. After the inspection the office decided to notify the public prosecutor.²¹ The case is ongoing, so we do not assess specific contracts.

Less is known about the doctors’ contracts than the headlines suggested. In November 2025 Money.pl, citing Gazeta Wyborcza, reported that four doctors were said to earn about PLN 10 million (≈ €2.27 million) a year in total, and one of them about PLN 2 million.²² In an interview with Calisia.pl the hospital’s director confirmed that four specialists earn PLN 250,000 a month, but did not specify whether this was per person or in total.²³ The contracts were signed in the first half of 2025, the last ones a few days before the change of management.²³

The chimney act has nothing to say here: these are civil-law contracts with doctors who do not run the hospital. And because nobody adds up such payments, we learned the amounts from press reports and the director’s statements, not from public data.

Being fair to the other side

A pay chimney is not a crime. A high rate may be the price of a specialty in short supply, and a doctor who bills expensive procedures brings the hospital revenue from the National Health Fund (NFZ). The director of the hospital in Kalisz said that terminating these contracts would seriously harm the hospital’s liquidity.²³ The president of the Supreme Medical Council (NRL) saw the source of the problem in the NFZ’s pricing of services.²² We describe how that pricing is set in Pricing of healthcare services.

We do not judge whether the ceilings in the act are too low or too high. We are interested in a narrower question: whether an amount paid from public money can be seen at all.

Public, but scattered

Without asset declarations none of the amounts in the table could be known. Declarations have two shortcomings, however. They sit in the bulletins of individual municipalities, counties and regions, because each local government publishes them on its own site. And the amounts are not in the text of the pages: in the BIP of the Silesian region each declaration is a separate PDF file for one person and one year.⁷ Working out how much hospital directors earn across the country requires going through many files by hand. That is why all the cases in this text come from journalists’ compilations rather than from a single database.

Declarations also cover only some of the people who receive public money in hospitals. A contract doctor who does not run a hospital and is not a councillor does not file a declaration. The highest known payments to doctors, including those outside management, are collected in Record payments. We describe what transparency covering everyone could look like — without names, under a permanent identifier — on the page Our proposal.

Notes 23laws, data and statements we relied on

1. Act of 3 March 2000 on the remuneration of persons managing certain legal entities, consolidated text, Dz.U. 2019 item 2136 (in Polish) — Art. 1 point 16 and Art. 2 point 10 (SPZOZ and its head), Art. 5(4), Art. 6(1) (who sets the pay), Art. 8 (multipliers; point 10 — six times for heads of SPZOZ, point 5 — agencies, institutes and foundations, point 6 — budgetary units), Art. 10(1) (an annual bonus “may be granted”), (6) (who grants the bonus to an SPZOZ director) and (7) (bonus limit: lists the persons under Art. 2 point 10, but the entities under Art. 1 points 1–3, 8–10 and 12, without point 16). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Duty to file asset declarations and their public disclosure: Act on municipal self-government (in Polish; consolidated text, Dz.U. 2026 item 662), Art. 24h(1) point 2 and Art. 24i; Act on county self-government (in Polish; consolidated text, Dz.U. 2025 item 1684), Art. 25c and 25d; Act on regional self-government (in Polish; consolidated text, Dz.U. 2026 item 720), Art. 27c and 27d. ↩ ↩²

3. Regulation of the Prime Minister of 26 February 2003 on the forms of asset declarations (including that of the head of a municipal organisational unit), consolidated text, Dz.U. 2017 item 2020 (in Polish), form of the declaration of the head of a municipal organisational unit, point VIII (income from employment and other gainful activity). ↩

4. Act of 21 August 1997 on restricting business activity by persons performing public functions, consolidated text, Dz.U. 2025 item 499 (in Polish) — Art. 2 points 6–6b and 9, Art. 4 points 1 and 5, Art. 10(1), (3) and (6). ↩ ↩²

5. Rzeczpospolita, “Dyrektor szpitala nie może być prezesem spółki i mieć w niej dużych udziałów” (“A hospital director may not be a company’s chief executive or hold large stakes in it”, in Polish), 21.05.2014 — on the Supreme Court judgment of 20.05.2014, I PK 206/13. ↩

6. Act of 9 June 2016 on the principles of setting the remuneration of persons managing certain companies, consolidated text, Dz.U. 2020 item 1907 (in Polish) — Art. 1, Art. 4(2) and (5). ↩

7. Public Information Bulletin of the Silesian Region, “Oświadczenia majątkowe — dyrektorzy jednostek, prezesi spółek” (“Asset declarations — directors of units, chief executives of companies”, in Polish); as of 15.10.2026: each declaration is a separate page with a PDF attachment. ↩ ↩²

8. Konkret24 (TVN24), “Dlaczego prezes Orlenu nie składa oświadczenia majątkowego, a prezes uzdrowiska w Rabce musi” (“Why the chief executive of Orlen does not file an asset declaration, but the chief executive of the Rabka spa must”, in Polish). ↩

9. istotne.pl, declaration of the director of the hospital in Bolesławiec for 2025 (in Polish); bolec.info, on the debt of the hospital in Bolesławiec (Ministry of Health data from September 2023) (in Polish). ↩ ↩² ↩³

10. ilovetychy.pl, “Gigantyczne wynagrodzenia w spółkach należących do Tychów” (“Huge salaries in companies owned by Tychy”, in Polish), 24.04.2026 — based on asset declarations for 2024 compiled by Tychy24.net. ↩

11. naOSTRO.info, on the pay of the director of the hospital in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski for 2024 (in Polish). ↩

12. Wirtualna Polska, on the income of the chief executive of the hospital in Grójec for 2025 (in Polish) — chief executive since October 2025, director’s duties in Nowe Miasto since 2026, current salaries PLN 22,000 and PLN 18,000 a month; Rzeczpospolita, “Trzy miliony złotych w rok” (“Three million zloty in a year”, in Polish), 17.06.2026 — breakdown of income from the declaration for 2025. ↩

13. money.pl, on the income of the director of the hospital in Łosice for 2024 (in Polish). ↩ ↩²

14. money.pl, on the income of the director of the hospital in Tomaszów Lubelski for 2025 and the announced PIP inspection (in Polish); Interia, “Kolejny lekarz z ogromnymi zarobkami” (“Another doctor with huge earnings”, in Polish); Bankier, on the director’s income and the hospital’s loss in Q1 2026 (in Polish). ↩ ↩²

15. Nasz Dziennik (ndz24.pl), on the director’s pay and the finances of the hospital in Działdowo (in Polish). ↩ ↩²

16. zero.pl, on the pay and bonus of the director of the hospital in Suwałki (in Polish). ↩

17. naOSTRO.info, on the statutory auditor’s opinion on the financial statements of the hospital in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski (in Polish). ↩

18. Rynek Zdrowia, “Nagrody dla dyrektorów szpitali zwiększających zadłużenie. „Nie ma przeszkód”” (“Bonuses for directors of hospitals that increase their debt: ‘There is nothing to stop it’”, in Polish). ↩

19. Rzeczpospolita, “625 lekarzy w Polsce zarabia powyżej 100 tys. zł. Dotarliśmy do wyliczeń” (“625 doctors in Poland earn over PLN 100,000. We have obtained the calculations”, in Polish), 27.05.2026 — AOTMiT data on the forms of employment of specialist doctors (exactly 73.16%). ↩

20. Klub Jagielloński, “Kontrakty maskują braki kadrowe. Co znajduje się na umowach lekarzy w Polsce” (“Contracts mask staff shortages. What is in doctors’ contracts in Poland”, in Polish), 13.07.2026 (Prof. Urszula Demkow, CC BY 4.0). ↩

21. PAP, “Kaliski szpital jest winny pielęgniarkom 37 mln zł. Ustalenia w sprawie nieprawidłowości” (“Kalisz hospital owes nurses PLN 37 million. Findings on irregularities”, in Polish), 29.07.2025. ↩

22. Money.pl, “10 mln zł rocznie dla 4 lekarzy. Prezes NRL: alarmujemy, to wina NFZ” (“PLN 10 million a year for 4 doctors. NRL president: we are raising the alarm, the NFZ is to blame”, in Polish), 20.11.2025 — the total amount after Gazeta Wyborcza. ↩ ↩²

23. Calisia.pl, “Zadłużenie szpitala, wysokie wynagrodzenia lekarzy i milionowe zaległości NFZ. Wyjaśnienia dyrektora placówki” (“Hospital debt, high doctors’ pay and NFZ arrears in the millions. The facility director’s explanations”, in Polish), 18.11.2025. ↩ ↩² ↩³