Government knocks down groundbreaking healthcare reform, Slovakia at the beginning of a long journey (video)
On Wednesday, the government approved a bill on the categorization of institutional health care, which is cooperating with the reform of networks of health care providers. The aim of the regulation is primarily to increase patient safety and create preconditions for increasing the quality of provided institutional care.
The quality and necessary use of resources should also be supported by the creation of hospital rates, in particular they will be defined as community, regional, comprehensive, final and national.
The scope of health care provided should also be defined through the established categorization of institutional care, and thus also other conditions and rules for the provision of this care. These are, for example, maximum waiting times, minimum numbers of selected medical procedures, as well as indicators of the quality of institutional care provided.
Capacitance is also taken into account
It should also introduce a new way of defining minimum networks of providers operating outpatient general outpatient care for adults and general outpatient care for children and adolescents.
They are taken into account by the presence of capacity throughput, ie to ensure that there are enough doctors for the population and local accessibility, ie travel time at the district level. A new tool is also being introduced to identify high-risk districts where general outpatient care is not provided.
Mixed arrangements are also specialized health care and some types of health care, especially invasive surgical health care, concentrations in hospitals, where healthcare professionals have the necessary skills and experience to provide them, thus achieving better quality of health care.
The proposed amendment also streamlines the concept of the list of policyholders waiting to be provided with planned health care.
They also plan to address acute health care
In parallel with this reform, the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic is preparing another one. Gradually, health care will have to be treated, ie emergency medical service networks, follow-up and long-term care and specialized outpatient care. The implementation of the change in the financing of institutional care should also be completed and the education of health professionals should be supported or changed.
The law should enter into force on 1 January 2022, with the exception of provisions on the categorization of institutional care when submitting applications and evaluating networks of categorized hospitals, provisions on the list of pending policyholders due to photographs of health insurance preparatory information systems, the National Health Information Center and health care providers. which enter into force on 1 January 2023 and, in addition to the provisions arising from the duty of institutional care, the abolition of the existing terminal network and its replacement by five network hospital hospitals, for which it is recommended on 1 January 2024.
Breakthrough reform
Minister of Health Vladimír Lengvarský said after the government meeting and approval of the first part of the major health care reform that it is “Breakthrough reform that puts us at the beginning of a long journey”.
He expressed the belief that the whole health care reform must be brought to a successful end, even though many governments have tried unsuccessfully to do so in the past.
He reminded that Slovakia now has 1.5 million euros available to improve the provision of health care thanks to the Recovery Plan. On the margin of remorse professional organizations added that “No hospital, no bed will be canceled”.