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Health insurance companies (HIC) returned payments for drugs for the last quarter of 2013 to thousands of disabled persons and pensioners. Health insurance companies returned to policyholders by the safeguard limit hundreds of thousands euros. Policyholders will receive the money automatically; there is no need to apply for them. General Health Insurance Company (VšZP) will return supplements for drugs to 17.113 policyholders of which 9.966 are old-age pensioners and 7.147 are disabled persons. Overall, VšZP sends back € 325.667. Dôvera HIC sends back amount of 79.000 euros to 4.209 insured persons. Union Health Insurance Company returned payments to 1.281 policyholders of which 927 are severely disabled and 354 are pensioners. Together company will send 24.805 euros.

The Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic approved buying hospitals in Žiar nad Hronom and Rimavská Sobota by investment group Penta. Hospitals are also running the facilities in Banská Štiavnica, Kremnica and Žarnovica. Penta will control these hospitals indirectly through the company Svet zdravia. This company already control ten health facilities. Financial group officially announced the transaction in December. Hospitals were bought from entrepreneur Peter Baran, who managed hospitals through the company NaP Holding. The Antimonopoly Office concluded that the concentration of medical facilities in the hands of Penta group will not jeopardize competition in a market.

At Teaching Hospital in Nové Zámky is more than 55% probability that caesarean birth takes place. In this hospital in 2012, 52.6 percent of all births were by Caesarean section. The hospital is argued that hospital is centralizing the riskiest cases in pregnancy and each caesarean is medically indicated. Slovak maternity hospitals have higher values on episiotomy, warn analysts from HPI. The World Health Organization recommends that doctors should not use this procedure in more than ten percent of the cases. The Slovak hospitals, however, used it in nearly 60 percent of births.

Best maternity hospitals in Slovakia are in Trenčín, Košice-Šaca and Čadca. This result from the evaluation of Maternity Hospital Guide 2013, which was coordinated by Health Policy Institute (HPI) and rodinka.sk. Ranking was based on the evaluation of services of 50 (of 54) maternity hospitals, which were interested to participate in this project. Evaluated was the quality of health care services provided by hospitals and also mother’s satisfaction. Overall, the winner is Teaching Hospital Trenčín, second was hospital in Košice-Šaca and third place received Kysuce Hospital and Polyclinic in Čadca. Trenčín hospital not just defence the leadership in the overall assessment, but also defence leadership in assessment of experts.

According to Health Policy Institute, debt of state-owned health care facilities will be 400 million euros by the end of the year. Ministry of Finance is not counting with this fact. According to the Ministry of Health, hospitals would not create new debt, and thus should be able to start to pay the old liabilities. At the end of last year, hospitals have 365 million debts. This year it may reach tens of millions of euros more. Such a scenario could be problematic for the state budget. That´s why hospitals tend to be annually known as one of its largest landmines. With what kind of debts of medical facilities Ministry of Finance is counting, Ministry did not said. According to experts, debt will continue to grow.

From 1 October 2013 Slovak Health insurance companies (HIC) will reimburse planned childbirth in the countries of the European Union. The insurance company will reimburse it up to a maximum average price for delivery in Slovakia. According to the legislation changes, for birth will mother pay directly in foreign birth centre and after that will request for refunding health insurance company. Reimbursed amount is the average price for the same performance in Slovakia. All three health insurance returned for childbirth about the same amount around € 600 for the birth itself and about 500 euros per child care.

The Ministry of Health has released the results of the second round of the tender for the license for providing ambulances. Within it Ministry reallocated licenses to operate 124 ambulances of ground emergency medical service. As is apparent from the results, the most of them received Falck Záchranná, Záchranná a dopravná zdravotnícka služba Bratislava, Záchranná služba Košice and ZaMED. Licences are valid for next six years, not four as it was in past. The first round of the tender was not successful for several regional hospitals. Their stations were acquired by private or public companies. In the second round several hospitals, on the contrary, obtain the licenses to continue the existing station.

At Slovakia are pre-operative assessments made about quarter million times per year. This examination should be easier for patients from now. The Ministry of Health plans to enable its performing from March by general practitioners, both for children and adults. So patients will no longer have to visit the internist. Currently, without visiting internist is impossible to be hospitalized. As explained by the main expert of Ministry of Health, for general practitioner is it possibility and not an obligation. Condition for providing this assessment is for example to have the ECG, which is not mandatory equipment for GP´s, however, many of general practitioners have it.

Debt of healthcare facilities to the Social insurance company grows even further this year. The end of January facilities owed on premiums € 89.7 million. Monthly their claims increased by more than 3.3 million. Accounts receivables of state-owned medical facilities have reached at the end of January this year more than 58 million euros. It is a monthly increase by nearly 2.7 million euros. Debt of transformed medical facilities was more than 31.6 million euros. Per month it increased by € 673,000. Social Insurance company register 21 healthcare facilities with the claims. Of these, five are state-owned and 16 are transformed healthcare facilities.

Salaries of employees of state-owned hospitals and specialized facilities will since the middle of January increase by four percent. The Association of state-owned hospitals and Slovak labor unions of health care and social services have agreed on the addendum to collective agreement of higher level from 2012. According to the data of Ministry of health, the other medical workers earned in teaching hospitals on average 783 euros, the average salary of nurses and delivery assistants was in these facilities 1,016 euros, physicians earned on average 2,500 euros. The increase in salaries will not take into account those workers whose salary was in years 2012 and 2013 increased on the basis of special laws. Addendum to collective agreement at the same time guarantees salaries to nurses at the level of the law about their salaries. Collective agreement including the addendum will be in force till 30th April 2014.