BRATISLAVA, July 30, (WEBNOVINY) – Medicines and hospitals are the priorities of the new Health Minister Ivan Uhliarik. Drugs should be prescribed on the basis of effective substance, he stated about the Cabinet’s new program statement. The doctor will not prescribe the patient recipe for a particular medicine but only for a needed effective substance; the pharmacist will let the patient choose from all types of the medications that contain this substance. Uhliarik expects this to cause significant savings, ranging from ten to fifteen percent, in the cost of medications and a reduction in the lobbying of pharmaceutical companies to doctors.
Uhliarik highlighted the planned transformation of health care facilities into joint stock companies. The hospitals that are already state owned should remain thus, and the best prepared hospitals could change their legal personality already this year. The minister added that the state medical emergency services should undergo the transformation as well. The transformation will not concern all health care facilities in the very beginning, according to Uhliarik, but it could cause problems in highly indebted hospitals.
Medical facilities, however, will have to face also other changes; which includes re-profiling, since there are not enough chronic care beds, but there are many acute care beds in Slovakia, according to Uhliarik who also mentioned an effort to introduce central purchases of medicine and medical devices in the facilities.
The adjustment of financing is waiting for the hospitals, and a uniform payment for diagnosis should become reality. However, Uhliarik called this measure a long distance run on which he wants to start working as soon as possible, but he underlined that the implementation of this system took eight years in England.
Uhliarik also supports the completion of the Razsochy Hospital, even though it was not included in the program statement. „My opinion is that a modern hospital with a university center should finally be built in Slovakia,“ he said. The subject is still being discussed. The price for the completion, set by the former government at EUR 480 million excluding VAT, could be reduced by the impact of the crisis.
The minister considers it premature to comment on many issues, including the effort of the new Cabinet to change the limiting of the usage of insurance companies’ profit under very specific conditions. Uhliarik stated several times that this area is not his priority.
According to the Government approved program statement, the hospitals will have to face a transformation and a uniform payment for diagnosis. Under very specific conditions, the health insurance companies will be able to keep generated profit again. The Cabinet of Iveta Radicova also plans to define the basic package of health care extent covered by public insurance.
The professional public thinks positively about the approved program statement, especially about the changes in financing, the introduction of uniform payments for diagnosis, and the attempt to define the basic health care package. The analysts have a negative opinion on the fact that the government did not find the courage to reduce the high concentration on the insurance market and to establish regulated patient financial participation, while medical facilities and doctors criticize the government efforts to return the freedom in the usage of generated profit to the health insurance companies.
SITA