HPI

Salaries of nurses should be increased gradually until the end of the year, or from May they will be guaranteed only for nurses in state hospitals. This for now seems to be a solution of the problem with mandatorily increased wages of nurses and the fact that hospitals do not have money to cover them. Representatives of the Slovak Chamber of Nurses and Midwives so far do not like any of these options. The definitive solution will be decided on Friday's Assembly of the Chamber.

President Ivan Gašparovič expects the new Minister of Health Zuzana Zvolenská to prepare a comprehensive legislative change, which will remove the incompatibility of existing laws. According to the President, it is necessary to create one law and then proceed according to it. The proposed change is supported also by the representatives of healthcare professionals and hospitals. They proposed that current six healthcare laws should be finally integrated into one law. 

Representatives of regional non-state hospitals negotiated today with the private insurance company Dôvera. The reason was seeking for financial covering of the mandatorily increased salaries of nurses and midwives. Both sides agreed to continue in negotiations on possible adjustments of contract from June. Dôvera, however, at the same time pointed out that there is a lack of resources in the healthcare system.

Number of inpatient facilities should be, according to the President Ivan Gašparovič, certainly reduced. In the future it will be necessary to solve the density of hospitals and density of beds, which is currently oversized. Minister of Health introduced to the President the proposals, which she wants to incorporate into the government program. They also discussed the measures, by which the MoH wants to solve the salary issue of nurses and other healthcare professionals. Minister will present them to the public after the Tuesday's negotiation with the representatives of nurses. 

Healthcare Surveillance Authority (HCSA) last year imposed penalizations for breach or default of policyholders' or premium payers' obligations in total amount exceeding € 1.9 million. For now, about € 700 000 of this amount was recovered. The most common case is non-payment of monthly health insurance contributions on time and in correct amount.

According to the Minister of Health, Zuzana Zvolenská, with no additional funding from the state, the healthcare system is threatened with the collapse. Zvolenská said, the state-owned Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa (General Health Insurance Company) may increase the payments to the health care providers by € 3 million per month. There is, however, a need of € 11 million monthly to cover the mandatorily increased salaries; next year it will be € 15 million. Predecessor of Zvolenská, Ivan Uhliarik has a different opinion and claims that from May this year the health insurance companies will save € 41 - € 49 million on purchasing of cheaper pharmaceuticals.

According to Minister of Health, Zuzana Zvolenská, the profit does not belong to health insurance companies and also thus it would be good for Slovakia to have only one health insurance company. Minister wants to deal with the profit of insurance companies highly expertly, not politically. She therefore promised that objective proposal will be submitted only in case, if it is in accordance with the Constitution and international legislation. 

Slovak Medical Chamber of Specialists proposes in up to two years to increase the payments for state policyholders on minimum of 5%. Government should, according to the union, also commit itself for seeking of the fair solutions of the problem with increasing of salaries of healthcare professionals. In the terms of private outpatient clinics it is, according to the president of union, unacceptable to disadvantage the healthcare professionals in these institutions in any way against other types of institutions, especially the state ones.  

According to the Slovak Medical Union of Specialist not all nurses agree with the opinion of their Chamber, which promotes the Act on wage claims of nurses. President of the Union, Andrej Janco, considers the attitude of the head of Chamber of Nurses and Midwives, Mária Lévyová, directly threatens their jobs. Nurses are, however, allegedly afraid to talk about it publicly, as their professional competency is controlled by the chamber of nurses: if they lost the professional competency they would lose their job.

Statements about the profit prohibition of the insurance companies may be allegedly used against the Slovak Republic. According to advocate Jana Martinková, in case when implementation of the planned measures in legislation sphere will affect the property rights of the shareholders of health insurance companies and there will be further disputes with state, exactly these statements may be used against Slovakia. Shareholders might, according to her, be able to speak about the intention to harm their rights and the real public interest and protection of constitutional rights of policyholders might be unnecessarily pushed into the background.