HPI

From April, hospital in Poprad will provide only acute healthcare to the policyholders of the health insurance company Dôvera. Hospital did not make an agreement with the private health insurance company on the new contract conditions. As results from the statement of hospital, insurance company did not want to consider the needs of financing of health care in hospital and offered only 30% from the amount which hospital needs to cover the increased costs on salaries of doctors and nurses.

Nurses asked the self-governmental units to check the compliance with personal norms in hospitals, so that there would not be more patients per each nurse than it should be. According to the President of Slovak Chamber of Nurses and Midwives, Mária Lévyová, some managers would come up to the situation, when one nurse would take care of 60 patients. If hospitals infringe the norms, they might lose license as well as contracts with health insurance companies.

Medical trade unions called on Ministry of Health to keep the promise given to nurses in terms of new way of their renumeration. According to Ivan Uhliarik, however, doctors do not have moral right to comment on the wages of nurses, as they used patients as hostages during negotiating of their salaries and turned to Constitutional Court because of the salaries of nurses. 

Nominee of party Smer-SD for the post of Ministry of Health, Zuzana Zvolenská, is planning to deal with nurses, hospitals and doctors about the solution of critical situation, which occurred after approving of the Act on minimum wage claims of nurses. Zvolenská also accented that new government will not doubt the claims of nurses. New head of the MoH will probably try to open the Act on state budget and increase the payments for the state policyholders. 

Health insurance company Union, which has reached the highest profit among all health insurance companies last year, will increase payments to hospitals from April only to cover increased salaries of doctors. Salaries of nurses will remain uncovered. Moreover, hospitals may expect higher payments only in case, if the system will be additionally financed either by increasing of payments from state for the economically inactive policyholders or by the releasing of € 50 million reserve for health care from the state budget.

Medical Trade Union does not like the behaviour of some hospitals against nurses by fulfilling of the Act on their minimum wages. Many healthcare institutions are in fact, due to the lack of resources, trying to avoid the approved legislation. Doctors allegedly support nurses. Trade unionist consider as the main problem of inadequate financing of hospitals the reluctance of health insurance companies to make real payments for services. 

According to a hospital statement, it will not be possible to cover the increased costs on wages of nurses in the hospital in Banská Bystrica without increasing of indebtedness of hospital. Although hospital has signed the amendments to the contracts with Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa (General Health Insurance Company) and insurance company Union, increased payments, however, do not take into account the increased costs of salaries of doctors and nurses. 

Still more and more people in Slovakia are undergoing the surgery operations in the frame of one-day surgery. Compared to 2009, in 2010 it was made more often in most of the departments. Currently the one-day surgery is being provided in 1 183 places. Most accessible one-day surgery is in Košice region, where it is being carried out in 299 places. In Bratislava region there are 191 such places and 158 are in Trenčín region. The least possibilities of one-day surgery are in Trnava region.

Association of Hospitals in Slovakia has adopted the proposals of Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa (General Health Insurance Company) and health insurance company Union for the adjustment of contracts from the beginning of April this year. Association has recommended its members to sign the amendments to the contracts with the state insurance company if the submitted proposal will be in the intentions of agreed adjustments. In case of insurance company Union, members should sign the amendments, if the offered increasing of prices will be reflected in the increased amount. Adjustments of contracts should help hospitals to cover the increasing of salaries of healthcare professionals set by the law.

Increasing of salaries of nurses in accordance with the new legislative can not, according to the Ministry of Health, threaten the operation of outpatient clinics. This opinion was expressed by MoH in the letter addressed to the dissatisfied private doctors, who worry about their existence. Statement of MoH resulted from the analysis of their costs and revenues, which was based on the data from National Health Information Centre.