News
New film: one doctor, three contracts.
How a doctor with a PLN 20,000 job can receive PLN 999,999 in a year and bill 72 hours in a single day. The film “Doba” (“24 hours”) is under the free CC BY 4.0 licence.
What the film says: transcript and sources
This doctor has a full-time job paying PLN 20,000 a month. That is what the payslip shows. But it is only one of three contracts.
The doctor in the film is a model example: he does not exist, but each of his contracts complies with the rules in force. All amounts are gross.
In a second hospital he has a contract. He gets a percentage of every procedure he performs. Over a year that is almost PLN 400,000. On top of that, a civil-law contract: PLN 30,000 a month.
Pay calculated as a percentage of procedures billed to the NFZ is allowed today. The Sejm passed a ban on it on 22 October 2026; the act is awaiting the Senate and the President.
Let’s add up the whole year. The job: 240 thousand. The contract: almost 400. The civil-law contract: 360. Total: PLN 999,999. One złoty short of a million. Formally, he is not a “millionaire”.
PLN 240,000 + 399,999 + 360,000. The percentage of procedures changes every month — on average approx. PLN 33,000.
And nobody sees this total. Each of the three workplaces knows only its own contract.
That was a model example. In a real case in Białystok a doctor received almost PLN 3 million for one year. The hospital explained it by a percentage of procedures.
Pay for 2024 at the Białystok Oncology Centre; the amount was revealed by an audit of the regional government.
Source: Kurier Poranny
All of this is legal. And it is paid from the same fund that pays for patients’ treatment. Public hospitals already have PLN 34 billion of debt. A system that cannot see its own costs does not know how much more it can bear.
Liabilities of 562 public hospitals at the end of 2025: SPZOZ PLN 27 bn, companies PLN 4.1 bn, institutes PLN 2.9 bn.
Source: Rzeczpospolita
Now time. A day in the job and a duty shift after it make a full 24 hours. In the same 24 hours: a duty shift on the contract and a shift in an ambulance. On each contract he bills 24 hours. 72 in total. In one day. Three in the morning. According to the rosters he is in three places at once. So where will a patient find him?
The job: 7 h 35 min, and a medical duty shift: 16 h 25 min; duty time counts as working time (Article 95 of the Act on medical activity).
Source: Act on medical activity, consolidated text, Journal of Laws 2026 item 156
According to reports, a doctor in Braniewo billed exactly such days.
In 2024: 11,577 hours, against 8,760 hours in a year. The investigation concerns the former president of the company running the hospital, not the doctor; it has been suspended, with no charges.
Sources: Interia, Dziennik Elbląski, District Prosecutor’s Office in Elbląg
Each of these places sees only its own hours. Nobody sees the whole. 73% of specialist doctors work on civil-law contracts. No register adds up their hours.
Precisely 73.16% of specialists are paid under a B2B contract or a contract of mandate (AOTMiT data).
Source: Rzeczpospolita, AOTMiT data
The state already knows who works where. Every year Statistics Poland links the register of doctors with social insurance data and NFZ contracts. Nobody adds up the amounts for one person.
Source: Statistics Poland (GUS), human resources in medical professions
The June act allows the minister to ask for these amounts. It does not require them to be published or collected regularly. That is why an amendment is needed.
Act of 19 June 2026: the data are provided “at the minister’s request”, “within the time limit and in the manner indicated by him” (our translation). There is not a word in it about publication.
Source: Journal of Laws 2026 item 972
It is enough for the amounts of one person to add up in one place. Under a permanent identifier, without a name. One person. One sum. Anonymously. zarobkilekarzy.pl
The site has a new film: “Doba” (“24 hours”), 2 min 37 s with narration in Polish; the English transcript with sources is below the player. It shows one doctor with three contracts: a full-time job paying PLN 20,000 a month, a contract with a percentage of every procedure and a civil-law contract paying PLN 30,000 a month. Over a year this comes to PLN 999,999 — one złoty short of a million. In a single day the three contracts together bill 72 hours.
The doctor in the film is a model example, and each of his contracts complies with the rules in force. The mechanisms are illustrated by real cases: in Białystok a doctor received almost PLN 3 million for 2024, which the hospital explained by a percentage of procedures, and in Braniewo — according to reports — a doctor billed days of 72 hours. The source of every figure is in the footer of the frame and in the transcript below the film.
What follows from this
Each workplace sees only its own contract and its own hours. Nobody adds up the total for one person, although the state knows who works where. The act of June 2026 allows the minister to ask for the amounts, but provides neither for their publication nor for a fixed schedule. That is why our demand is an amendment: the total pay of each person from all facilities, every quarter, under a permanent identifier instead of a name. One person, one sum, anonymously.
Free licence
The film is under the CC BY 4.0 licence. It can be downloaded in two versions: landscape (MP4, 1920×1080, 25.4 MB) and vertical (MP4, 1080×1920, 22.5 MB) — both are also in the media kit (in Polish). It can be published and adapted, including by commercial media — it is enough to credit the source: zarobkilekarzy.pl. If you change something, say so.
Infographic to download
1 graphic · portrait and landscape, light and dark
A graphic to share in two formats — portrait 1080×1350 (Instagram, Facebook, X) and landscape 1200×675 (X, LinkedIn, presentations) — light and dark. The sources, the page address and a QR code to the page are on the graphic.
Each sees their own piece. Nobody sees the total
