HPI

Slovak Trade Union of Health and Social Services has signed the higher level collective contract with the Association of Faculty Hospitals. Contract adjusts the salaries of all employees in 17 faculty hospitals by 8% with effect from July 1, 2012. Trade union wants to enforce the similar adjustment also by the Association of Hospitals in Slovakia, which associates other, smaller hospitals. The aim of the trade union is to achieve the adjustment of salaries of all employees in 62 hospitals associated in the Association of Hospitals in Slovakia. 

Slovak Chamber of Nurses and Midwives has on Monday turned to the Chairman of the Parliament Pavol Paška. They asked him for a cooperation and coordination of all activities connected with the proceedings on the Constitutional Court. As the Chamber is not a participant of the proceeding, it offered Paška the legal and technical cooperation. According to her Presiden, Chamber wants the act on minimum wage claims of nurses to be considered as soon as possible and adjudicated as valid and in accordance with the Constitution.

Monika Pažinková should be a new President of the Healthcare Surveillance Authority (HSA) from the beginning of August. She should replace Ján Gajdoš, who resigned. Minister of Health Zuzana Zvolenská has already submitted the proposal for her appointment to the governmental meeting. Monika Pažinková has been a member of Supervisory Board of the Authority from February last year.

Ministry of Health led by Zuzana Zvolenská wants to have better overview about management in the state hospitals. This should be provided by the automated data collection from the information systems of the institutions. Ministry will learn more about the financial and operation costs from it. Ministry wants this way make a possibility to regularly evaluate and compare the financial and operation indicators in hospitals.

Health insurance company Dôvera handed over the data, which will serve for the elaboration of the predictor of chronic disease (PCG) into the reallocation. At the same time, however, Dôvera pointed out that this is sensitive information about policyholders and Ministry of Health still publicly did not confirm the security of the data. Information contains for example the information on the consumption of pharmaceuticals and on the diagnosis of each individual citizen.

Minister of Health, Zuzana Zvolenská, wants to present the intention to create one health insurance company in Slovakia in very short time and she did not exclude that it will happen next week. How concretely could this issue be solved, however, the head of department did not want specified. She only admitted that one of the possibilities is the buying-out of private health insurance companies. But there still may be more options.

Ministry of Health plans to implement the rules for the export of pharmaceuticals from Slovakia and prevent thus the reexport of pharmaceuticals abroad. Minister for now did not say how concretely should be the export of pharmaceuticals abroad adjusted. She, however, indicated that there might be an approval required by exporting. In the times of former Government the producers and suppliers of pharmaceuticals already warned of the problems with reexport of pharmaceuticals. It was facilitated by their low price due to the tightening of the referencing of prices of pharmaceuticals.

Running of hospital in Trstená is in danger, as the laboratory employees from radio-diagnostic department have filed the mass notices. This means that from August hospital will not be able to operate and do the X-ray and CT examinations. Hospital in Trstená is the attraction zone for upper Orava. More than one hundred patients are being examined in this department daily. Laboratory employees has filed the noticed allegedly because the former director of hospital, Peter Dančík, increased the wages nurses but refused to increase wages of laboratory assistant.

Association of Health Insurance Companies considers the Prime Minister's declarations on dealing with private health insurance companies and direction to state insurance company as ill-considered and highly populist. According to the President of the Association, this is a breaking of political capital at the expense of private insurance companies, which are in accordance with the law and consistently ensuring the health care for 1.8 million policyholders. By the timing of such statements the Prime Minister is, according to her, trying to distract from real problems of the healthcare system.

After turn-out of Minister of Health Zuzana Zvolenská only some executive managers maintain their positions in the hospitals in the scope of Ministry of Health. In hospitals – subsidized organizations the current directors are appointed to manage only temporarily. In specialized hospitals, however, the names are definitive. Only director of hospital in Poprad, Jozef Tekáč, and director of National Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases, Mongi Msolly, remained in their positions. They both have been on these positions since 2006.