Penza, 15 May 2015. PenzaNews. The governor Vasily Bochkarev once again criticized the regional Ministry of Health.

The head of the region expressed his outrage over the unresolved problems of recruiting well-trained medics and, in particular, the results on the deficit of medical professionals presented by the acting minister Dmitry Zinovyev, during a meeting with chief medical officers along with professors of medical institutions and colleges held in the Burdenko clinical hospital on Friday, May 15.

“The staff issues must be taken care of every day. A chief medical officer’s main mission is to staff the hospital, not sit at the phone and employ their so-called friends and acquaintances. The first thing a CMO should be paid for is for a well-staffed hospital. And if the head is there, but the staff is absent, why should we pay them? This is why there are disputes with the people,” Vasily Bochkarev said.

He also added that the chief medical officers in the Penza region are “living like swans.”

“Once a swan makes a nest – no snake, no bird, no eggs, nothing can get hatched around. They destroy it all. This is how we seem to be treating the work now. But they [the CMOs] are apt at solving their own problems. Let’s recall about, so to say, the Bednodemyanovsk hospital. The CMO there – all good, all right – is a friend of Stryuchkov [the Minister of Healthcare of the Penza region]. They have their own drugstores, the wife is in charge,” the governor stressed.

For the second time this week, he suggested Vladimir Stryuchkov to head the Zakharyin city clinical emergency hospital, and install a competent professional as the new minister.

This suggestion was first voiced during the May 12 briefing session of the regional government, when Vasily Bochkarev ordered to pull the medical institution back from dilapidation.

Moreover, Vasily Bochkarev ordered the Penza region government chairman Mikhail Kosoy to fire two officials of the regional Ministry of Healthcare responsible for providing information and creating spreadsheets on staff completion in the hospitals, after the aforementioned data was not presented to him during the meeting on May 15.