Distribution of doctors’ pay in Poland.

The fullest picture of how much doctors earn in Polish hospitals comes from a compilation by the Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Tariff System (AOTMiT) of February 2026. The agency collected pay data from 538 hospitals, about 96% of the facilities in the so-called hospital network, and presented them in May at a meeting of the Tripartite Team for Health Care (Trójstronny Zespół do spraw Ochrony Zdrowia).¹² It is a working document of the agency; its figures are known from articles in Rzeczpospolita and from the Polish Press Agency (PAP).³ We have gathered them here into a single distribution: from the statutory minimum for salaried doctors to payments of over PLN 100,000 a month.

Medians by form of employment

The median is the middle amount: half of the payments are higher, half lower. AOTMiT gave it separately for doctors with and without a specialisation and for three forms of employment: an employment contract, a contract, and a contract of mandate or for specific work.³

Specialist under a contract: median PLN 25,595, 8% higher than for an employee

1. Specialist, contractorPLN 25,595
2. Specialist, salariedPLN 23,666
3. Non-specialist, salariedPLN 20,733
4. Non-specialist, contractorPLN 18,070
5. Non-specialist, mandate or specific-work contractPLN 17,939
6. Specialist, mandate or specific-work contractPLN 16,940

At the median, the form of employment makes a moderate difference to pay: a specialist under a contract receives about 8% more than as an employee. For doctors without a specialisation the order is reversed — the employment contract has the highest median. Contracts of mandate and for specific work come out lowest.

About 73% of specialists (exactly 73.16%) are paid under civil-law contracts, and about 25% are salaried.³ Where this predominance comes from and what follows from it is described in Contract or employment.

So the medians of contracts are known: AOTMiT collected them from hospitals. Two other things remain unknown — the amounts of individual contracts, because nobody publishes them, and the total paid to one person by many facilities, because nobody calculates it.

How widely the amounts are spread

The median does not show the spread. From the same compilation we also know that:

• the largest group of specialists’ contracts falls in the range PLN 10,000–15,000 a month — 20.6% of contracts (10,327).³ The median is more than PLN 10,000 above this range, so contract amounts are widely spread;
• among salaried specialists the largest group earns PLN 15,000–20,000: 4,842 people, or 23.1%;³
• the average pay of a salaried specialist, including on-call duty and seniority allowances, is PLN 24,044.76 (≈ €5,460). The lowest-paid quarter receives on average PLN 15,759.32 (≈ €3,580), and the best-paid quarter — over PLN 29,030.77 (≈ €6,590).¹

The floor: the statutory minimum for employees

For salaried doctors, base pay cannot fall below the minimum set by the act of 8 June 2017. From 1 July 2026 it is PLN 12,910.16 (≈ €2,930) for a specialist, PLN 10,595.24 (≈ €2,400) for a doctor without a specialisation and PLN 8,458.38 (≈ €1,920) for an intern.⁶ These amounts exclude on-call duty and allowances. The minimums for other medical professions are shown in Other medical professions.

The hourly rate at the minimum salary depends on the number of working days in a month. The daily working-time standard in healthcare facilities is 7 hours 35 minutes, so a month with 22 working days has 166.8 hours. On-call duty (dyżur medyczny) for employees is paid like overtime: with a 50% supplement on weekdays and 100% at night, on Sundays and public holidays.⁷⁸

An hour of on-call duty for a salaried specialist: at least about PLN 116–155

	Monthly minimum	Per hour	On-call hour on a weekday	On-call hour at night, on a Sunday or public holiday
Specialist doctor	PLN 12,910.16 (≈ €2,930)	about PLN 77	about PLN 116	about PLN 155
Doctor without specialisation	PLN 10,595.24 (≈ €2,400)	about PLN 64	about PLN 95	about PLN 127
Intern doctor	PLN 8,458.38 (≈ €1,920)	about PLN 51	about PLN 76	about PLN 101

Resident doctors, that is, doctors in specialist training under a residency, earned on average PLN 9,797.14 (≈ €2,220) in February 2026.¹ This is an average, not a median, which is why we do not put it on the chart next to the medians. The source also does not say whether the amount includes on-call duty. For comparison: the median for all salaried doctors without a specialisation is PLN 20,733 (≈ €4,710).³ We list resident doctors’ pay in individual specialties in By specialty.

Contracts: a market rate, not a statutory one

Contract rates are neither set by any act nor collected by any register. According to the portal Wsparcie dla Szpitala, hospitals pay specialists under contract PLN 180–220 an hour in medium-sized towns and in fields without shortages, PLN 210–280 in large cities, and up to PLN 300 in hospital emergency departments (SOR) and intensive care.⁸ That is from about 2.3 to 3.9 times the minimum hourly pay of a salaried specialist.

The comparison is not like for like, however. From the amount on the invoice the doctor pays social contributions themselves and gets neither paid leave nor sick pay from the hospital. These are also market ranges, not measured payments.

Over PLN 100,000 a month: contracts, not doctors

The threshold of PLN 100,000 gross a month is nearly four times the median contract of a specialist. How many payments exceed it depends on what is counted: individual contracts, people in one facility, or people after adding up all their workplaces.

Over PLN 100,000 a month: the result depends on what is counted

What is counted	How many	Type of figure
Specialists’ contracts worth over PLN 100,000 a month in one hospital	625, or 1.2% of contracts	AOTMiT measurement, February 2026; the unit is a contract
Salaried specialists paid over PLN 100,000 in one hospital	49, or 0.2% of employment contracts	AOTMiT measurement, February 2026; the unit is a contract
Doctors paid over PLN 100,000 in one facility	about 560, just over 1% of doctors	AOTMiT data according to the agency’s president
Doctors paid over PLN 100,000 after adding up all workplaces	5–10% of doctors, or 7,000–14,000 people	estimate by the president of AOTMiT; the number of people calculated by Rynek Zdrowia

The AOTMiT compilation counts contracts. In it, 625 specialists’ contracts were worth over PLN 100,000 gross a month, or 1.2% of all of them, and 49 salaried specialists earned that much (0.2%).³² The president of the agency said that about 560 people exceed this threshold in one facility, just over 1% of doctors; in another statement the figure given was 1.5%.⁴⁵ A doctor with two contracts of PLN 60,000 each in two hospitals receives PLN 120,000 a month, but in such a compilation does not exceed the threshold even once. The compilation gives no upper limit; the highest known amounts from individual hospitals are collected in Record payments.

After adding up all workplaces, the number of people above the threshold can only rise, because the sum of several payments is not smaller than any one of them. The president of AOTMiT estimates that if the payments to the same person from different facilities could be combined, 5–10% of doctors might have over PLN 100,000 a month.⁴ Rynek Zdrowia converted this estimate assuming 140,000 professionally active doctors: the result is between 7,000 and 14,000 people.⁵ This is an estimate, not the result of a calculation: no method was presented, and nobody publishes the data with which it could be checked. The only certainty is that for anyone who works in more than one place, the amounts on this page are a lower bound.

Full payroll lists: entries above one million

The second measurement is the annual payroll lists that facilities send in the monitoring “Ile zarabiają lekarze?” (“How much do doctors earn?”) of the Citizens Network Watchdog Poland (Sieć Obywatelska Watchdog Polska).⁹ So far, full lists for 2025 have come from 97 of the 1,358 facilities asked. They cover 11,113 payroll entries, including 172 above PLN 1 million gross a year, or on average more than PLN 83,000 (≈ €18,800) a month from one facility. Such amounts appear on the lists of 36 of the 97 facilities.

These figures cannot be converted into doctors either. The facilities that sent lists are not a random sample, and a payroll entry is a position on one facility’s list, not always one person. For a doctor who also works elsewhere, the amount from one list is only part of their earnings. The full distribution and the method are described in Doctors’ pay from disclosed payroll lists.

Contracts in the Central Register of Contracts

The third source is the Central Register of Contracts of Public Finance Sector Entities (Centralny Rejestr Umów). Since 1 July 2026 it has included contracts concluded by, among others, independent public healthcare facilities (SPZOZ); hospitals operating as companies do not belong to the sector.¹⁰ At the end of August the register contained 54 contracts for the provision of healthcare services worth over PLN 1 million, but some of them cover several years: 10 three-year contracts were worth over PLN 1 million a year, that is, over PLN 3 million over three years.⁵ Some of these contracts were concluded by hospitals with individual medical practices, that is, with doctors running their own business. The contracts for the highest amounts, however, were signed with companies, mainly for laboratory tests and reporting on imaging examinations — this is payment to a firm, not the pay of one person.⁵

Nor is the amount in a contract a payment. The director of one hospital explained that contracts are signed “with headroom”, with a margin for extra hours, and the doctor receives as much as they work.⁵ The register therefore shows the value of a single contract, not a payment or a person’s earnings, and, like the other sources, it does not add up the contracts of one doctor. What the register covers and what it does not is described in Lack of transparency.

One person, several unconnected payroll entries

The measurements described above have one feature in common: each shows a payment from one facility. The president of AOTMiT admitted that the agency has no data linking the pay of the same person from different entities.⁴ Nor can it yet convert a contract into a full-time equivalent.²

The model below shows how this looks from the perspective of one doctor. It is an illustrative example, not a description of a specific person, and each of these arrangements is legal in its own right.

1. A contract in a hospital. At a rate of PLN 180–300 an hour, every 100 hours a month gives PLN 18,000–30,000. Wsparcie dla Szpitala describes an anonymous example of an anaesthetist under contract in a voivodeship (regional) hospital: 220 hours a month, including 100 on call, and an invoice for PLN 48,400 (≈ €11,000) gross.⁸
2. On-call duty or standby in a second hospital. The same doctor can be on call elsewhere — as an employee or under another contract. Employees are also paid for standby “on the phone”: each hour of it is paid at half the hourly base rate, without being present in the hospital.⁷
3. An outpatient clinic or a primary care (POZ) practice. On top of that there may be visits in a specialist outpatient clinic with a contract with the National Health Fund (NFZ), and for a family doctor with their own practice — the capitation rate: from July 2026, PLN 232.56 (≈ €53) a year for each patient on the list, multiplied by an age-dependent coefficient.¹¹ This is the practice’s revenue, from which it pays for tests, among other things, not the doctor’s pay.

Each of these payments goes to a different facility or to the NFZ. None of them needs to exceed PLN 100,000 for them to exceed that threshold together. And if none of them exceeds it, in the AOTMiT compilation this person is not among the payments above PLN 100,000. How work in several places adds up is described in our text on working for multiple employers, and the per-patient rate in the analysis Money per patient in primary care.

Since 5 August 2026 the minister of health may request from facilities pay data linked to the PESEL number and the licence to practise (PWZ) number — in other words, data that can be summed for one person. The act does not, however, provide for their publication.¹² We describe the details in our analysis The pay data act.

What these figures show and what they do not

Notes 12laws, data and statements we relied on

1. Rzeczpospolita, “Tak zarabia się na etacie w szpitalu. „Rzeczpospolita” ujawnia zarobki w ochronie zdrowia” (“This is what a salaried hospital job pays. Rzeczpospolita reveals pay in healthcare”, in Polish), 20.05.2026 — AOTMiT data of February 2026 from 538 hospitals (about 96% of the hospital network): averages and quartiles of pay for employees, average pay of a resident doctor. ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Puls Medycyny (PAP), “Ilu lekarzy zarabia ponad 100 tys. miesięcznie? Dane AOTMiT” (“How many doctors earn over 100,000 a month? AOTMiT data”, in Polish) — AOTMiT working document of February 2026 presented at the May meeting of the Tripartite Team for Health Care: 1.2% of specialists’ contracts, i.e. 625, above PLN 100,000 a month; the agency cannot yet convert contracts into full-time equivalents. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. 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 of February 2026: medians by form of employment, the most common pay ranges, 625 contracts (1.2%) and 49 employment contracts (0.2%) above PLN 100,000, the share of civil-law contracts (73.16%) and employment contracts (25%) among specialists. The data concern individual contracts with a specific hospital. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

4. Rynek Zdrowia, interview with the president of AOTMiT (in Polish), 17.06.2026 — just over 1%, i.e. about 560 people, earn over PLN 100,000 a month in one facility; after adding up payments from many facilities it could be 5–10% (the president’s estimate); the agency has no data linking one person across entities. The president had given the same estimate earlier to Rzeczpospolita (27.05.2026). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Rynek Zdrowia, “Kontrakty roczne na milion złotych dla lekarza. Sprawdziliśmy centralny rejestr” (“Annual contracts worth a million zloty for a doctor. We checked the central register”, in Polish), 31.08.2026 — AOTMiT had data on individual contracts, not on doctors’ earnings; the president of AOTMiT: 1.5% of doctors exceed PLN 100,000 in one workplace, and after adding up payments from many facilities it could be 5–10%, which, assuming 140,000 professionally active doctors, gives 7,000–14,000 people; Central Register of Contracts at the end of August 2026: 54 contracts for the provision of healthcare services above PLN 1 million, including 10 three-year contracts above PLN 3 million, some with individual medical practices, the highest with companies (mainly diagnostics); citing Wyborcza.biz, a hospital director’s statement that the amounts in contracts are maximums, not actual pay. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

6. Rynek Zdrowia, “Od dziś 12 910 zł dla lekarzy, 11 485 zł dla pielęgniarek — 1 lipca podwyżki medyków” (“From today PLN 12,910 for doctors, PLN 11,485 for nurses — pay rises for medical staff on 1 July”, in Polish) — minimum base pay from 1.07.2026 under the act of 8 June 2017: the group coefficient times the base amount. ↩

7. The Act on medical activity on the LexLege website (in Polish): Article 93 (a standard of 7 h 35 min a day and on average 37 h 55 min a week), Article 95 (on-call duty; paragraph 5 refers to Article 151¹ of the Labour Code on overtime) and Article 98 (pay for standby to provide services). ↩ ↩²

8. Wsparcie dla Szpitala, “Ile zarabia lekarz w szpitalu 2026? Od 10 595 zł brutto” (“How much does a hospital doctor earn in 2026? From PLN 10,595 gross”, in Polish), as of September 2026 — the hourly rate of a specialist at the minimum (PLN 12,910.16 ÷ 166.8 h ≈ PLN 77.4), on-call duty paid like overtime (Article 95(5) of the Act on medical activity in conjunction with Article 151¹ of the Labour Code), ranges of contract rates in hospitals and an anonymous example of an invoice for 220 hours. ↩ ↩² ↩³

9. Citizens Network Watchdog Poland (Sieć Obywatelska Watchdog Polska), monitoring “Ile zarabiają lekarze?” (“How much do doctors earn?”, in Polish) — requests to healthcare facilities and their replies on the fedrowanie platform; the compilation of full payroll lists and the criterion for selecting them: Doctors’ pay from disclosed payroll lists. ↩

10. Act of 4 December 2025 amending the act amending the Criminal Code and certain other acts, and amending certain other acts (in Polish; Dz.U. 2025 item 1844) — Articles 34a and 34b of the Public Finance Act (Central Register of Contracts of Public Finance Sector Entities), applied to contracts concluded from 1.07.2026. Independent public healthcare facilities (SPZOZ) in the public finance sector: Public Finance Act (in Polish; consolidated text Dz.U. 2025 item 1483), Article 9(10). ↩

11. NFZ, Order No. 65/2026/DSOZ of the President of the NFZ of 14 July 2026 (in Polish), annex 1 — the capitation rate of a primary care (POZ) doctor for services from 1 July 2026. ↩

12. Act of 19 June 2026 amending the Act on publicly funded healthcare services and the Act on medical activity (in Polish; Dz.U. 2026 item 972), in force from 5.08.2026 — new wording of Article 27a of the Act on medical activity. ↩