The Ministry of Health has prepared and coordinated a bill on the digitization of healthcare. They want the uniformity and connectivity of the data in the national eKarton, we want greater privacy and greater power for patients to make their own decisions about their data.
“At the Ministry, we believe that we are preparing the ground for the future, as both digitization and health and treatment using modern technologies are absolutely necessary in the 21st century,” said the Minister of Health at the press conference Danijel Bešič Loredan.
With the law, which, according to Bešič Loredan’s predictions, will be submitted to the parliamentary procedure according to the regular procedure, they want to achieve better quality treatment, greater friendliness for patients and greater accessibility, as it will “there was an exceptional administrative relief for doctors and also nurses”.
Structural changes in ZZZS
In parallel with the aforementioned legislative proposal, the starting points for the structural change of the Institute for Health Insurance of Slovenia were also prepared (ZZZS), who are still harmonizing it “with many stakeholders”.
“When the solutions in the law are ready, we will also go to a public hearing. In a way, we consider the law to be Siamese twins. If we introduce digitization into Slovenian medicine and into the Slovenian health system as a whole, structural changes at ZZZS must also be adopted , that the matter will be fully implemented,” he said.
The minister did not want to talk about the details today. He only said that they were looking for a solution that would be the most optimal for the user. According to a recent report by N1, the starting points should, among other things, envisage a new management structure of the institute and should abolish the assembly of the institute, as it is currently formed, and a smaller supervisory committee should be formed. According to the proposal, the ZZZS would no longer have a general director, but executive and management tasks would be performed by the board of directors.
They want to follow Estonia
As the minister recalled, he personally wants to follow the example of the Estonian health fund, which has achieved transparency through full digitization. According to the minister, all contractors who have signed a contract with the Estonian institute are obliged to send information about payment and services performed, and all this is then published.
“If all 26 hospitals could see among themselves today how much money they get from ZZZS and what they do for it, I am sure that the efficiency would be significantly different than it is today,” added the minister. I also think that if we want to eliminate corruption in healthcare, this is also the only way.
Complications in Celje hospital
At the same time, the Minister of Health also commented on what was happening at the General Hospital (SB) in Celje, where due to lengthy changes to the legal basis for additional work outside regular working hours at the end of last year, there were short delays in the preparation and reading of radiologists’ reports.“It’s true, with the amount of work, the ministry is late with some things,” said Bešič Loredan, adding that in some institutions, despite this, the work is going on, and in such cases, calculations are made retrospectively.
He emphasized that the managements of health institutions are responsible for the provision of services. In this case, according to him, it would be best to “picked up the phone and solved the problem”.
“Over and over again, the stakeholders in the health care system throw responsibilities at each other unnecessarily, instead of putting the patient first and asking ourselves what needs to be done so that every patient gets to the service,” he emphasized.
Source: Rtvslo
