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The premises of transplantation laboratories and clinic immunology in the University hospital Košice were reconstructed. This workplace has a great importance, because of special devices used here by experts. Supposedly this is the best equipped state laboratory in Slovakia. Every year it carries up about 220 000 examinations. Laboratory is also significantly involved in the transplantation programme of tissues and organs. Costs on the reconstruction of new premises reached € 58 000.

Medical trade unions by the University hospital in Bratislava are launching the petition against the charging for parking places in front of the hospitals in Petržalka and Ružinov. They will also collect the signatures against the renting a space in hospital Kramáre to private company Dr. Magnet that provides the magnetic resonance there.

Automatic self-aligning defibrillator, which controls the heart rate, was for the first time implanted in East Slovak Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases in Košice. This kind of device was first commercially used in October last year in France. Defibrillator automatically adjusts the parameters, which have been until now adjusted only by the less accurate echocardiography test. 

Banská Bystrica region and representatives of non-state hospitals in this territorial scope are appealing to health insurance companies and competent authorities for the speedy solution of their impending collapse due to the statutory increase of wages of doctors and nurses. Required solution involves the submission of amendments to the contracts with insurance companies. These should, proportionally according to the representation of insurance companies in particular regions, fully cover the increased costs of hospitals on the wages of doctors and nurses in the form of lump-sum payment. 

Robot-assisted operations with the help of Da Vinci technology in hospital in Banská Bystrica are partly covered by the state-owned Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa (General Health Insurance Company). Hospital, however, entered into the negotiation also with the private health insurance company Dôvera. Dôvera did not want to specify the interim results of negotiations, daily SME reports. Costs on robot-assisted radical prostatectomy are around € 4 300, while the patient pays € 300 of this amount.

Doctors continue their protest against the increasing of wages of nurses and want to suspend the force of the Act on their wages. Slovak Medical Chamber is asking the General Prosecutor to bring the proceedings to the Constitutional Court of Slovak Republic. Court should, according to Chamber, decide that the Act on minimum wage claims of nurses and midwives is inconsistent with the Constitution and also suspend its efficiency. 

Hospitals currently owe to Social insurance € 24.12 million. Most of this amount are the unsettled liabilities of smaller hospitals, as in October last year the debts of state-owned hospitals were set off by state with the amount of more than € 58,8 million. Social insurance, however, after debt elimination of hospitals registers increasing of claims against the state-owned hospitals again. Most indebted hospitals are in Trenčín region.

Chairman of the Parliamentary Health Committee Viliam Novotný believes that money needed for covering the minimum wage claims of nurses are available. As an example he cited the reserve in state budget in amount of € 50 million, savings due to approved acts on pharmaceuticals, increased collection of premium from economically active policyholders or savings on inefficient prescribing. In his opinion it is firstly necessary to look for the internal savings in the health care and afterwards, if necessary, use the existing reserve in amount of € 50 million.

Nurses are due to the new act on minimum wage claims, approved by Parliament in the beginning of February, under big pressure. According to the president of Slovak Chamber of Nurses and Midwives Mária Lévyová currently is being doubt not only the Act, but also the activities of the Chamber. Nurses are according to her discouraged and their superiors threaten them with dismissals. President of the Chamber would, instead of degradation of nurses, welcome the constructive negotiations between providers and health insurance companies.

New decree of Ministry of Health will shift more pharmaceuticals to the category of supporting pharmaceuticals. This means that they will not be covered by insurance companies. About hundred of pharmaceuticals will be more expensive from April. New decree allows the shifting of 130 medicaments and 92 specific pharmaceuticals into the category of supporting, what means that patients will have to fully pay for them by themselves. Insurance companies will allegedly annually save on these pharmaceuticals more than € 16 million.