HPI

Paediatricians are angry at former Minister Ivan Uhliarik and are asking for bringing a suit against him. The reason is a change in purchasing of vaccines adopted by the Ministry of Health at the end of last year. This was stated by the head of Section of Paediatricians of Slovak Medical Chamber, Katarína Šimovičová. While previously the vaccines were issued by the pharmacy to nurse or doctor on the prescription for a particular patient, from December last year they have to be purchased by doctors themselves. Doctors claim they do not have money for it.

Ministry of Health will significantly not prohibit the extension of the networks of pharmacies. Although Minister in the prepared amendment to the act on pharmaceuticals proposes how many pharmacies may be owned by one person or company, but does not specify that the owner should only be a pharmacist. Slovak Medical Chamber would, according to its vice president, prefer the model that works in most of EU countries, that a pharmacist may own only one pharmacy.

Ministry of Health is working on further reduction of beds and departments in the frame of decreasing of debts of faculty hospitals. Compared with last year this optimizing should be carried out gradually and only in big cities. Cancelling of beds and departments is related to presented plans of the Ministry to centralize the performances. In practice this means that hospitals will be specialized on certain procedures so they would not be provided in other hospitals at once.

Prohibition of loyalty systems in public pharmacies already has its legal version. Ministry of Health has submitted to public comments the material, which proposes the prohibition of providing financial or non-financial benefits and donations by the pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements and medical devices available on prescription. Holder of the provision for providing of pharmaceutical care will not be able to provide such benefits personally or through other persons. 

Associations representing all key pharmaceutical producers and distributors have participated on the professional discussion on pharmaceutical legislation. They have submitted to Ministry of Health their proposals for adjustment of the acts influencing the pharmaceutical and medical devices market. In their proposals they are mainly dealing with unsolved issues of contradiction of several laws, as well as with the facto non-enforcement of some legal standards, overall market flexibility or strengthening of patient rights.

Health insurance company Dôvera began with sending of annual settlement of insurance to first 50 000 clients. Further settlements will be sent by this insurance company on the date chosen by its policyholders. Dôvera plans to make totally 170 000 of them. Clients can find the result at their home address or at the address of their employer. Detail calculation can be found also on the website of insurance company.

More than 26% of total health care expenditures in 2010 were on pharmaceuticals. Compared to other OECD countries thus Slovakia had the third highest share of expenditures on pharmaceuticals, right after Hungary and Mexico. Slovakia got well above the average of all OECD countries, which stands at 16.6%. This was alleged in the OECD Health Data 2012 report published on the website of the organization, which provides information from 2010.

Consequences of the failure to pay insurance are becoming more serious for policyholders. Last year the penalties for late payments were tightened by the law. Now, moreover, Dôvera came with the mechanism, which will ensure that bad payers will not get their planned interventions. Dôvera thanks to the online reporting system of hospitalisations – HospiCOM, knows about the planned hospitalisation in advance, so Dôvera can warn the hospital about the non-payer and thus the health care will not be covered.

General hospital and polyclinic Levoča, member of Agel group, has introduced a new navigation system in its area. Patients as well as visitors of the healthcare institution can thus find particular workstations a little easier than until now. New navigation of the hospitals has after several decades replaced the original signs in this healthcare institution.

Doctors who are considering the start-up of private practice have in some specializations huge advantage according to lack of experts in some regions of Slovakia. This finding is based on the comparison of rules setting the necessary number of specialists with the reality. The biggest problems are in specializations such as radiation oncology, plastic surgery or drug dependence medicine. Insurance companies are allegedly recording no applications for conclusion of the contract in these specialisations.