Panama is facing a shortage of medical specialists and has been forced to use Law 89 of 2013 to recruit doctors from abroad. According to Dino Mon, the director general of the Social Security Fund (CSS), six recruitment calls have been issued without receiving any feedback to fill the available specialist positions. Mon detailed that this involves three foreign doctors already living in Panama, with at least three of them interested in accepting one of the required positions. He clarified that from his point of view, Law 89 has 'many defects and when it has been tried to apply, it does not yield results,' as it is a regulation 'created with the objective of continuing to protect the medical profession in the country and needs to be modernized, but to modernize it, it has to be proven that it does not work.' Mon mentioned that the points of the law he considers non-functional are those that state that applicants must travel to Panama at their own expense to take an exam, and if they pass, they must face a migratory process with a renewable permit. He questioned: 'Who wants to move to a country with their entire family when the process has so many hurdles to have a solid one?' For this reason, Mon said, the CSS is first conducting a promotion campaign in Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador to see how many specialists respond, and then present changes to the law before the Assembly to make the contracts effective. Currently, the CSS has 53 open positions for specialist doctors finishing their internships, 10 for subspecialists, and 31 additional positions for general practitioners who want to study abroad with a paid salary to build a solid base of competent personnel, giving Panamanians an opportunity. Mon also took the opportunity to announce that the CSS has expanded the list of medications, so that properly trained general practitioners can prescribe medications for gastroenterology, neurology, cardiology, and others, so that patients do not depend on appointments with specialists.
