Former Prime Minister and the head of Smer -SD, the largest governing coalition party, Robert Fico has re-iterated that his party's MPs will not support the hospitals reform project if it is introduced as an ordinary law. He told Health Minister Andrea Kalavská, a nominee of his party, to stick to their agreement to have it as a constitutional law and that she should re-consider her future in politics if the reform is not approved. On Tuesday, the Government's Legislative Council okayed the draft hospital reform which Kalavská presented as ordinary legislation and not as a constitutional law. On Wednesday the Cabinet passed only a part of the draft- the one dealing with long term care- and gave Health Minister a month to gain political support for the core of it dealing with the reform of the hospitals network itself.
The draft of the hospitals reform plans to create a network of hospitals optimally distributed across the country with guaranteed funding from health insurance companies and fully functional by 2030. Hospitals are to be divided into three categories, each offering a different range of services. Local hospitals will ensure a high availability of acute care, while regional hospitals will provide more comprehensive health care and the national ones will deal with the most complex medical procedures. Health Minister Andrea Kalavska said on Tuesday that she is fully aware of the fact that this is not a good time to adopt such key reforms as hospital stratification, but the fact is that the ministry has been working on this for a long period in consultation with many experts and professional organisations. She thus reacted to the Slovak Medical Chamber (SPK), which earlier in the day called on her not to submit any such bill.
