The President of the Republic, Nataša Pirc Musar, convened the first forum dedicated to healthcare, where, according to her, we urgently need a comprehensive reform, which must be the result of a tolerant dialogue with both the profession and civil society.
President of the Republic Nataša Pirc Musar will organize the first health forum in the morning at Brdo pri Kranje, where experts from the field of health, politics and representatives of civil society will talk about the financing of the health system, effective organization and management of health care, and rationalization.
“Slovenia needs a comprehensive health reform, which must be the result of a tolerant dialogue both with the profession and with civil society, in search of good solutions for everyone,” the president’s office also wrote when announcing the event and added that the field of healthcare is one of the fundamental strategic areas to which the president will pay special attention this year.
The forum program is divided into three main thematic sections. In addition to the Minister of Health Danijela Bešič Loredan prominent experts in the field of healthcare, politics and representatives of civil society will participate in the forum, who will jointly discuss current topics in the field of healthcare and propose solutions to improve the situation.
Professor at the Faculty of Economics in Ljubljana Mitja Čok and Petra Došenović Bonča will talk about healthcare expenditures in Slovenia from the point of view of public finances and collective and private financing of healthcare services. Head of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Medical Faculty of Ljubljana Alojz Ihan will talk about what the public expects and what (can) get from public healthcare.
The expert director of the National Institute of Public Health will speak about the capacity of health activities Ivan Eržen, the general director of the Institute for Health Insurance of Slovenia will speak about the risks for the health care system and society Tatjana Mlakar.
The government is getting more and more complicated in the preparation and implementation of measures
Regulating and reforming Slovenian healthcare has also been set as a priority by the ruling policy, but the preparation and implementation of measures are getting more and more complicated, Radio Slovenija reported Snežana Ilijaš. The Ministry of Health has so far implemented two more important measures, clinics for the undefined to increase access to family doctors and unlimited payment for all services to reduce waiting times. But the results are not encouraging for now, warns an international consultant for health systems Dorjan Marušič: “We throw money in. And what happened? Waiting times have increased. And not only that…let’s do it all over again in a few years. We’re throwing money out the window.”
Marušič believes that “we are dealing with the wrong things” – first of all, according to him, it is necessary to reorganize the health care network, which has been practically unchanged for almost 80 years, to maintain the primary level as the foundation of our system and to determine the basket of rights and this before changing the sources of funding: “It doesn’t matter if we first determine the means and then the basket, that is, first determine the blanket, and then lie down and try to cover ourselves with it. Or if we first determine the basket and cover it with public funds. What we will determine , that it is a public priority, we must cover it with public funds.”
But public funds are already very limited. We do not have long-term sustainability, and expenses will increase even more due to demographic reasons, and we should be aware of this even when supplementary insurance is abolished, warned the economist on Monday in the Studio at 5:00 p.m. Dušan Mramor: “If you are in this situation, as we are, you have to walk extremely carefully, with a feeling for every measure you take.”
And in such a situation, the wage reform does not open, Mramor points out: “When you start negotiating wages, it’s like a pressure cooker, when he lifts the lid – it’s just going to fly out.”
Source: Rtvslo
