HPI

According to daily Pravda from 5/11/2011 Ministry of Health in the new regulation shifts about 100 pharmaceuticals to the list of supplementary medicines, which are not covered by the health insurance. Ministry in the case of these pharmaceuticals explained, that in many cases they are the medicines without sufficient documented evidence of clinical efficacy or they are too expansive. Experts oppose and argue some of these pharmaceuticals can not be replaced by others.

162,000 people want to change the health insurance company from the January next year and most of them opted for the private insurance company Dôvera, which will grow by more than 40,000 policyholders. Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa will continue as the biggest health insurance company, but will lose its 61,000 policyholders. Private health insurance company Union grew by 20 000 clients. The insurance company Dôvera informed, that 2/3 of new clients are economically inactive people.

President Ivan Gašparovič has recommended the Minister of Health Ivan Uhliarik to stop the transformation of hospitals into joint-stock companies. He has recommended Government not to adopt the Certificates of Corporation and to postpone the transformation until the early elections. According to President the public fears that the transformation would lead to privatization and thereby to the abolition of state medical facilities. At the same time he addressed himself to medical trade unions to initiate the withdrawal of physicians' notices.

The control of The Healthcare Surveillance Authority focused on regulations compliance with the listings of insured persons waiting for the provision of planned health care revealed several problems. Control has for example shown that providers keep their own waiting lists and insurance companies do not include to the lists those patients, whose planned term of operation is longer that one year. Among other things, Authority also found that insurance companies do not keep lists for the screening mammography.

After the transformation of hospitals into joint-stock companies the health insurance companies may have even more important word in the field of health care provision, according to etrend.sk. Protest of doctors may help insurance companies to reduce deficiently busy departments and to cancel some beds. If the departure of doctors actually occurs, hospitals will have to proceed in merging of departments and the closure of beds. Provision of health care should be thereby moved to the hospitals and departments, which will be able to provide it and the resources of insurance companies will be focused exactly in these facilities.

According to weekly Zdravotnícke noviny from 3/11/2011 medical trade unionists and doctors have critical comments to the draft law on wages of nurses and midwives. According to them, the intention to guarantee an adequate level of remuneration to only two, albeit very important groups of employees in the sector, is systemless and discriminates the employees of other professions in health care. Slovak Medical Chambre has proposed to withdraw the proposal from the legislative process. Chamber considers unacceptable if there is an isolated claiming by one group of employees.

Doctors did not start to withdraw their resignation notices even after the pressure from hospitals and Ministry of Health. Critical situation in health care provision could thereby occur in next few days, because many hospitals are pushing the doctors to draw their leaves of absence. This is happening despite the fact, that there is no one to replace them and crisis plans of the particular hospital managements count at most with the interference of the departments and sending patients to the other hospitals. Most of them are in the same situation though.

Transformation of state medical facilities into the joint-stock companies will continue. This decision was made by the government. More than 20 hospitals should be transformed by the end of this year, the others next year. In addition, the Government agreed on the disclosing of memorandum with the creditors of hospitals within the realization of debt relief before the transformation. Medical trade unions are, however, still trying to stop the transformation.

Several private investors are interested in the regional hospitals in Topoľčany and Levice, namely the companies Agel, Penta and Unifarma. Heads of caucuses established the commission, which should deal with the problem of financing of both health care facilities. The Commision's task is to determine whether it is possible to find an external operator. If this is not, the Commission will have to find out, how to continue with the non-profit organization Hospital and Clinic.

Suppliers of medicines and medical devices do not agree with the proposal of Ministry of Health to reduce the trade margins for distributor and servery of medical devices. Suppliers do not see a reason to decrease the total margin of 25%. The proposal will reduce the co-pays paid by patients and also the reimbursement of the medical devices by the insurance companies, but the insurance companies will save much more. The reason is that the measure will decrease the end price of medical devices and the reduction will be apportioned in the same proportion as the current reimbursement/co-pay.