In order to exceed the capacity of some hospitals for patients with COVID-19, it was often necessary to transport them to other hospitals where spare capacities were available in the past year. Subsequently, in the event of death, the survivors incurred additional costs of transporting the deceased person from the hospital back to the place of residence. If the patient has been transferred to a hospital at least 100 km away, these costs will be reimbursed by the State up to a maximum of EUR 1000. The Ministry of Health will be informed in the near future of the form of reimbursement requests.
The second and third wave of Coronavirus pandemics caused hospital capacities for patients with COVID-19 disease to be filled and exceeded their maximum limits. For this reason, patients, in cooperation with the Emergency Health Service Operations Centre, had to be transported to hospitals with available spare capacity. These were specifically patients who needed support for artificial pulmonary ventilation and who, unfortunately, due to the low vaccination rates of the most affected regions, had a high mortality rate. Thus, the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic proposed the reimbursement of transport costs related to the transport of persons who died of COVID-19 disease in hospitals outside their territory to which they were transferred due to the filling of the capacities of the covid departments in hospitals in the place of residence in 2021 and the Government of the Slovak Republic approved this proposal at today's meeting.