Tag: hospitals

New way of remuneration of hospitals in Slovakia should be implemented by the German DRG model. German Institute for the payment system in hospitals should help with its development. Health care surveillance authority has concluded the cooperation agreement with this Institute on  December the 13^th. After signing of contract for three years the works on Slovak version of the DRG system began, especially on classification of diagnosis and medical services. First Slovak versionof DRG should be available by the end of June 2012.

Minister of Finance does not want to give hospitals money from the state budget reserve to cover the increase of salaries of doctors and nurses approved by the Parliament. According to MoF Minister of Health declared that he will cover the increasing of salaries within his  budget chapter. According to Ministry of Health, however, doctors will not see any money from state in January. MoH still relies on the fact that health insurance companies will save about € 100 million next year due the pharmaceutical reform and will redirect them to hospitals. Hospitals, however, do not know how to overcome this season.

Childrens' faculty hospital and clinic in Bratislava has a new workplace of Intensive care unit at the Department of pathological newborns. Hospital managed to reconstruct the old one thanks to the money from the sale of surplus assets (€ 371 000), the heritage from USA (€ 77 000) and the gifts (€ 56 000). Moreover, the Archbishop of Bratislava gave the director of hospital check for € 89 400. Archbishop wishes that hospital will use the money for purchasing of medical equipment.

Part of the so-called Plan B which should deal with the situation in hospitals affected by the notices of doctors after December the 1^st is also the set up of 24-hour hotline for patients. Patients should get to know, if their doctor is working, or if the operation was postponed for a few days. Plan B also deals about where the patients would be transferred if the particular hospital was unable to do some specific operations. The plan also describes how the operations centre will work and how the ambulances and air ambulance services will be directed in the case if some hospitals will have limited run of some departments. According to Minister of Health Ivan Uhliarik the Plan B also considers the future merging of some departments in larger cities.

The Government on its special meeting on Monday approved the declaration of emergency. It should involve the obligation to work to ensure the performance of health care and prohibition of the right to strike for certain employees. Emergency will, however, not cover whole territory of Slovakia, but only 15 health care providers – university hospitals in Bratislava and Košice, faculty hospitals in Trnava, Trenčín, Žilina, Prešov and Banská Bystrica, concerned will also be childrens̍ hospitals in Bratislava and Košice and hospital and clinic in Prievidza, Trstená, Dolný Kubín, Čadca and Liptovský Mikuláš. Emergency will be declared from Tuesday, November the 29^th.

According to Minister of Finance Ivan Mikloš the European Union could consider the bailout of hospitals as an unauthorized state aid. Therefore he has decided to reclassify the financial resources assigned for hospitals into a loan. According to him the bailout will de facto not occur, only the creditors will change. Since the loan was provided by state, state will become the creditor. Hospitals will continue to have obligations, but these will be obligations to the state. Minister of Health Ivan Uhliarik, however, insists on the bailout and plans to inform about its necessity on the next session of government.

Ministry of Health and Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa came up with new tactics. They are beginning to offer money to those hospitals, which will ensure, that their doctors will withdraw the notices. Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa has offered to add money to dozens of non-state hospitals, although most of notices were registered in large university and faculty hospitals. By signing of the amendments hospitals will be committed to ensure the health care for patients in the full range even after December 1^st. Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa believes that this will also help to partially solve the salaries of doctors in hospitals.

If doctors do not withdraw their notices, the availability of health care will be deteriorated. Minister of Health Ivan Uhliarik wants to handle this situation so that after December 1^st several departments of large hospitals will operate in weekend mode. President of Medical trade unions Marián Kollár, however, argues that neither this kind of regime will be possible. For example, gynaecological departments will allegedly not have doctors, because they have, according to Labour code, already met their number of services. Minister of Health and Medical trade unionis are still unable to agree on the wage increases and the transformation of hospitals into joint-stock companies.

Hospitals will probably not have to meet the minimum requirements for the material and technical equipment by the end of this year as it is specified in the Decree of the Ministry of Health. According to the Ministry of Health some healthcare providers are actually not able to meet these requirements and so Ministry of Health has decided to give them more time, till the end of 2012. Decree provides, inter alia, the compulsory instrumentation, material and pharmaceutical equipment of the outpatient care and hospitals, but also the number of patients per doctor or nurse in the day or night service.

Faculty Hospital in Žilina opened a new emergency post on Monday. According to daily SME, hospital received € 13 million from EU funds for its construction. For this amount the building was built, arranged and equipped with devices and, moreover, hospital purchased a linear accelerator for oncology. In the urgent part a small operating room, resuscitation room and expectancy beds are available. In the outpatient part are ambulances for internal medicine, trauma surgery, surgery and neurology. 25 nurses and 12 medical orderlies will work on the emergency post. There while will be 4 doctors in each service.