Director of the University Clinical Hospital Mostar, Ante Kvesić, illustrated the problem with a concrete example.
– A doctor who leaves the hospital at one o’clock in the afternoon and goes to work privately, charges between 80 and 90 marks for an examination. That same doctor, while working in a hospital, receives 8 to 9 marks for examining a patient with a referral, when we include the value of his work. That’s where the story ends – he explained in an interview with Fena.
As he points out, the problem is not only in practice, but in financing.
– Our healthcare is based on contributions, which generates very limited funds. For years I have been going to Germany, I have worked in hospitals and private clinics in Essen, Munich and Nuremberg, where I have seen how the system can work. There you have a dozen insurance companies competing for hospital services, dictating prices and ensuring sustainability. We don’t have that – he explains.
Flat-rate financing, which is determined in advance every year, limits both hospitals and insurers, according to Kvesić.
– Although the employees of the institution often have good intentions, they are all faced with limitations that the system cannot overcome. At the same time, private clinics in Mostar, of which there are at least twenty, function on completely different financial principles. If private polyclinics worked at our hospital prices, they would have already closed – adds Kvesić, stating that the hospital’s price list dates back to 1988.
Kvesić points out that there are solutions, but they require adaptation of models that work in countries like Germany or Austria.
– If we can’t invent a smart system, we need to rewrite the one that works. There are a number of countries in Europe that have solved this very well. If private practices are brought into the network unchecked, public health will collapse. In a year we will have nothing. People who have been paying contributions for 40 years will end up paying check-ups for cash at private clinics. It is not fair to anyone – he warns.
In the end, he said that he is not against private business, but that as a responsible person he must defend the hospital within his capabilities.
– What particularly bothers me as a person is the fact that people who have worked for 40 years in state institutions, such as hospitals, pay contributions as much as the system allows. In the end, they all get their pensions because the contributions have been properly paid. However, these same people, after decades of insurance payments, are going to pay for a private polyclinic in cash – Kvesić concluded.
(Vijesti.ba)
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