HPI

Medics from Medical Faculty of Pavel Jozef Šafárik University will be able to educate themselves also in Košice-Šaca Hospital. Private institution from the Unipharma group of healthcare institutions has offered its facilities and experts to the Medical Faculty. Practice will take place in new clinics built by the hospital in cooperation with the school. Internal clinic, surgery and gynaecological and obstetric clinic will be available for the future doctors.  

Term, when Constitutional Court will deal with the accordance of the act on minimum wage claims of nurses and midwives with the Constitution is not known yet. As was stated by the spokeswoman of the Constitutional Court, Anna Pačurová, the law does not define the term, in which the Court should decide. As she continued, the length of preparation for negotiation and decision in this case is individual and depends on the complexity of pleading.

Current management of Ministry of Health does not consider the actual grouping of pharmaceuticals as ideal and result of this is, according to Ministry, a situation when surcharges for pharmaceuticals are decreasing. Ministry has thus prepared the proposal of the Decree, which should in future prevent such a situation. Decree adjusting the methods of setting of maximum amount of payment from health insurance company for the standard amount of pharmaceuticals included in categorization list of pharmaceuticals is currently in the commentary proceeding.

Compared to this year, people will pay few euros or even tens of euros more on the healthcare contribution from the next year. The reason is changes in calculation of the tax base, which was enforced through the recently approved amendment to the act on social insurance. Government has changed through this amendment the functioning of the pension system. Changes will affect all categories of policyholders, the insurance rates remained unchanged.

Current crisis situation in the university hospitals threatens the functioning of whole healthcare system. This was noted by the scientific council of Slovak Medical Chamber in its statement. According to the council, the malfunction of curative and preventive care, education and research as the unit process threaten the providing of health care. Scientific council plans in cooperation with the management of medical faculties and university hospitals to elaborate the proposal of the Statute of University Hospital as a binding legislative act.

Anti-corruption measures in healthcare system proposed by Medical Trade Union are non-conceptual and contrary to several acts. This is claimed by the Association of Hospitals in Slovakia. Proposal, according to the Association, gives on one side a great power to supervisory boards which do not have any responsibility for the operation of hospital and on the other side reduces the competency of the director by managing and increases his/her criminal liability.

Permissions for emergency ambulances should be valid for the longer time. Ministry of Health proposed the prolongation of the validity of the license for providing of emergency medical service ambulance from 4 to 6 years. Proposal of the amendment to the Act on health care providers also require submitting together with the application for issuing of the permission the document on personal ensuring for providing of the ambulance and the project of strategy and development of the medical emergency service.

Association of Private Doctors is interested in cooperation with Ministry of Health on creating of unitary health insurance system, even though it considers the system with several insurance companies as the better one. This was stated on the general meeting of the association by newly re-elected President Ladislav Pásztor. He also added that Minister of Health Zuzana Zvolenská, who has also participated on this meeting, according to her own words expects their statements and professional help. 

Medical Trade Union considers the statements of the President of the Association of Faculty Hospitals, Jozef Valocký, as a badge of incompetence and misleading. Valocký reacted to the criticism from the side of Medical Trade Union by saying that directors of hospitals have lower salaries than doctors in Trade Union. Trade Union stated that if the public procurements in hospitals were made “standardly”, there could be savings for third stage of increasing of salaries of doctors. Valocký afterwards called on Trade Union to stop slandering the directors of hospitals and stated that some hospitals are spending 100% of their incomes on salaries.

Joint replacement surgery is, compared to other OECD countries, not so usual in Slovakia. Slovakia is at the end of the scale in the number of these operations. Total hip or knee replacement is used for the treatment of patients with osteoarthritis. Lower number of operations, however, does not have to indicate that Slovaks are healthier in that respect. The reason could be also the poorer access to the treatment or more restrictive conditions, by which doctor may recommend the operation. Fewer operations may be also related to the lower overall life-span of citizens.