Emergency services was the last straw that financial managers of drowning government hospitals are trying to capture. At a meeting with the health minister, Prof. Nikolai Petrov, representatives of the National Association of employers offered health service emergencies in the capital to be taken over by 5 to 6 clinics instead of 41 hospitals as it is now. Professional organization, whose members are mainly managers of local major hospitals, asked Minister Petrov to restore the zoning system for ambulances in Sofia. Association President and director of St. Anna Hospital Dr. Dimitar Dimitrov motivated the request with the explanation that now there are hospitals in the capital that accept only one emergency patient in a month, while the major 5-6 ones have sufficient number of teams in different specialties, with resuscitation of third level of competence and can offer high quality service. It is in them, according to Dimitrov, where emergency patients must be transported to.
Obviously, because of the oversupply in the hospital market, coupled with underfunding pathways by the National Health Insurance, the state clinics are pressed to the wall and have nowhere to retreat. The financial resource that the Ministry of Healthcare sets aside on emergency services is one of the last lucrative morsels. Out of the 368-million lev budget of the ministry a significant part goes precisely to the payments in the sector. Hospitals in Sofia are already 90 and the fight for every single patient is fierce. Furthermore, the current system of emergency is too corrupt and needs to be corrected. Private owners, working with health insurance, prefer to accept in their emergency departments people whose treatment requires no considerable financial resources and will surely be covered. For others, it appears that there are no available beds. Accordingly ambulances transport people with severe cases, often accompanied by numerous side conditions, to public hospitals, such as Pirogov. Because of that state hospitals sink further into debt.
A problem exists also with the system of the emergency call number 112. While waiting for solving this problem, directors of major hospitals in the capital were able to calculate that their budgets for 2013 were by 25 percent lower than what is needed. They will address the issue of the financing of hospital care at a meeting with Minister Petrov, manager of the health fund Dr Plamen Tsekov and representatives of the Bulgarian Medical Association.
The BANKER
