Health Minister Andrea Kalavská said that she might resign from her post if the stratification of hospitals - a reform of the hospital network in Slovakia - is not approved. According to Slovak Medical Chamber (SLK) president Marian Kollár the project is ill-prepared for implementation at the moment.
Although the SLK is in favour of stratification as a whole, the medical organisation objects to the current form of the related bill. SLK insists that every hospital must perform basic treatments in order to save human lives. Addressing personnel shortage issues with 'temporary internships' for individuals from third countries cannot and must not be used to resolve Slovak health care." Moreover, according to Kollár, insurance companies have been invested with inappropriate powers in the current draft, such as the option to shut down and move departments.
On Tuesday, Health Minister Kalavská announced that she would submit her draft for hospital stratification reform as a constitutional amendment. Thus, in order to approve it in the parliament the draft will need 90 out of 150 MP's votes. Kalavská explained that with this move, she aims to garner support across the entire political spectrum.
Opposition parties Together, Freedom and Solidarity and We are family agree that Slovakia needs stratification, however, they will wait for the final draft to see whether they approve it. The Government will vote on the draft in late August. If approved, it will be forwarded to parliament where MPs will vote on it in the autumn.
The current draft of the hospital's stratification plans a network of 46 hospitals distributed optimally across the country with guaranteed funding from health insurance companies and fully functional by 2030. Hospitals are to be divided into three categories: local hospitals accessible to patients within half an hour from their homes, regional hospitals reachable within an hour, and national hospitals within 2 hours. Local hospitals will ensure a high availability of acute care, while regional hospitals will provide more comprehensive health care and national ones will deal with the most complex medical procedures. They will have two years to gradually meet a set of criteria - for example, a minimum number of certain medical procedures to be performed each year.
