Representatives of the Bulgarian Medical Association threatened that if the state raises the fee for medical checks of pensioners, which is now 1 lev, and the state fails to compensate the physicians with budgetary funds, the Association would not sign the National Framework Agreement and in 2015 they will be working under the same conditions as now.
President of the Association Tsvetan Raichinov said that up to his knowledge the budget for next year has not provided 15 million levs in compensation. In the absence of these funds retirees will likely have to pay the regular fee of 2.90 lev a check-up.
Representatives of the Association of General Practitioners urged the state to pay them the invoiced amounts and the due sums for pensioner checks for August, September and October.
Representatives of the Medical Association said they will not sign the framework contract also if the budget of the Health Insurance Fund for 2015 is less than this year’s one along with all its updates.
"We talked that if indeed the money for healthcare increased, they grew mainly in the "medications” sector – by nearly 1 billion levs, while for medical services and activities the increase was by 200-300
million levs," said Raichinov.
He said that is the budget for next year have to be sufficient for new pathways and procedures, there should be certain redistribution of available resources. "Where there is unjustified overspending, funds should be reduced and redirected to new activities. Because of these overspendings what is necessary is to analyze the costs of hospitals that would took nearly a month," added Raichinov.
The Association of General Practitioners commented that unlike other European countries, where between 25% -30% of the health budget is for primary outpatient care, the country this year has scheduled only 7.1 percent of the money from health insurance on this item. Therefore GPs insist that next year they get at least 8% of health insurance payments.
GPs want also the National Framework Agreement to be signed separately for hospital, specialist and primary care, as the current model has shown that it is ineffective and fails to ensure a balance of interests. According the GPs, the growing number of hospitalizations was not due to bad work of outpatient care, but to the existing work rules.
