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Tag: patients
Minister of Health Zuzana Zvolenská wants to allow pharmacies to provide patients with discounts from surcharges for pharmaceuticals at the expense of their margin. It will depend on pharmacy, whether it will use this possibility and what amount of discount it will offer. Discount, however, cannot exceed the half of surcharge. Zvolenská wants this change to enter into force from January. The change should be a part of the reform of pharmaceutical acts, which will prohibit the loyalty discounts in pharmacies. Slovak Pharmaceutical Chamber is surprised by this proposal. Its Vice President Ondrej Sukeľ suspects Penta of a pressure.
Representatives of doctors and patients want to fight with diabetes systematically. Slovak Diabetes Society therefore prepared the proposal of National Diabetes Program, which focuses on five goals. According to the President of the Society, Emil Martinka, this program is based on European Union requirements. It is focused on prevention of this disease, its early diagnosis and the best treatment of the patients. Important part of the program is an active screening of this diseases and nationwide education on the risks of diabetes and healthy lifestyle.
Patients are most satisfied with the quality of services in specialized, especially private hospitals. This results from the evaluation of hospitals, in which 6 000 policyholders of insurance company Dôvera expressed their opinion. Evaluation covered the approach of doctors and nurses, quality of accommodation, food, cleanliness of the departments and quality of health care. Among the faculty hospitals, patients were most satisfied with the Central Military Hospital in Ružomberok, while the best general hospital is according to this ranking a hospital in Stará Ľubovňa.
Several patient organizations are considering the future common proceeding by negotiations with Ministry of Health. As was pointed out by the representatives of patients on their common negotiation, the problems in health care persist even with new Government. According to Executive Director of the civic association Slovak Patient, Ján Mútal, the patient organizations necessarily need a unit platform. Patient organizations believe that such a step would bring them a representative in the Categorization Committee, which decides on the payments for pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
Result of this year's insurance change campaign, according to the Association of Health Insurance Companies, approved that Slovak policyholder prefers the private insurance companies and the option. According to the President of the Association, the result of the campaign is a clear message to politicians, that policyholder does not agree with the intention of cancellation of private insurance companies. She pointed out that in absolute numbers the state insurance company had the worst result, as it has lost almost 20 000 policyholders. Government should, according to her, take this result into account and reconsider the whole intention of introducing of unitary system of public health insurance.
Results of this year's changing of insurance companies are already known. According to the information published by Healthcare Surveillance Authority the possibility to change the insurance company was used by more than 187 000 people. Numbers showed that only insurance company, which has profited on changing of insurance companies, was Union. Union reports almost 30 000 new policyholders. General Health Insurance Company has lost around 19 000 policyholders, Dôvera has reported minus 11 000 policyholders.
The largest network of pharmacies, Dr. Max, has collected 60 000 signatures for remaining of loyalty discounts in pharmacies. By the action, which was launched two months ago, this network wants to reverse the effort of the Government to prohibit the loyalty systems. Representatives of the network will submit the petitions to the Parliament in the coming days. Members of Parliament should by the end of November definitively approve the amendment to the act on pharmaceuticals, which contains also the ban of discounts in pharmacies.
Hospitals last year paid almost € 180 000 to Healthcare Surveillance Authority for mistakes in treating of patients. This year it could be even more, as the Authority in the first half of this year imposed or proposed other authorities to impose hospitals the penalties in amount of more than € 100 000. Patients may demand for significantly higher amounts, if they sue hospital for mistake by the treatment on the court.
In Slovakia, there is no unit concept of diagnosis, treatment and overall care of patients with rare diseases. On today's negotiation in Gabčíkovo the Government has approved the National Strategy of Development of the health care of patients with rare diseases for the years 2012 – 2013. Its aim is to prepare the national plan of health care of these patients and recast it into the health and social care.
Top 30 most often prescribed pharmaceuticals will get from January significantly more expensive in consequence of proposed measures of the Government. They include for example the pharmaceuticals for asthmatics, cardiac patients, but also for oncological patients. This results from the calculations of political party SDKÚ-DS, which were reported by Vice President Viliam Novotný. According to these calculations the changes would currently apply to 1 037 of almost 5 200 categorized pharmaceuticals. 222 of them would get cheaper and 815 would have a higher price.
