“The emergency room earns several thousand kroner an hour even without a subsidy. And if they give half to the doctors and nurses, they will all fight for it,” said Šmucler. According to him, if Prague does not want to pay it in hospitals, it can add it to private ones. “If I simply don’t want to do it, then let Prague announce a competition, and there are so many large workplaces in Prague that they are fighting for it,” he said.

Dental emergencies in Prague tend to be very overcrowded, according to Šmucler, they are also used by people from the surrounding regions. “A lot of people don’t want to go there with things that don’t belong in the emergency room,” he added. The Motol hospital gave the same reason for closing the children’s emergency room. People often use emergency rooms in the evening so they don’t have to take time off from work.

“A patient who comes to the emergency room at night with a toothache from the morning and it was not suitable for him to go to the dentist during working hours, the dentist can even refuse if, after the examination, he concludes that the patient’s state of health the provision of emergency care,” states the CSK in the brochure on emergency services for the regions. According to her, the emergency is intended for cases where there is a sudden change in the state of health.

At the same time, there are more dentists in Prague than in other regions. One has 750 patients, the others have twice as many. “Prague has the capacity to treat about 3.5 million inhabitants,” said Šmucler. I also expect fallout from cities from where people go to the metropolis for work, such as Kolín or Příbram.

According to Šmucler, there are several ways to ensure an emergency. In some regions, dentists take turns in the composition of emergency rooms in their surgeries, but they see the problem with this system in how patients are supposed to find out which one is currently open. He wants to get this information, for example, into the Rescue app.

According to Šmucler, the emergency service does not belong to the university hospitals that provide it in Prague. He considers the best solution to be the building of a metropolitan emergency service, where a health care provider established or contracted by the city would provide emergency services for the entire metropolitan area through its employees.

The chamber does not want to have an obligation to keep an emergency for all dentists. “Employees enter into an employment relationship with the provider voluntarily, of course, the provider must be able to set such conditions for the employee to find,” CSK said in press materials.