The Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic brings a key document, which is part of the Optimization of the hospital network and which clearly defines how hospitals will look five levels from 1.1.2024, i.e. what care will be provided in the institutional facility, minimum number of performances, staffing, material equipment, maximum waiting times, quality indicators and other conditions and requirements for individual levels that hospitals will have to meet.
The purpose of the proposed legislation is to concentrate specialised healthcare and certain types of health performances, in particular invasive operational health performances, at hospitals where healthcare professionals have the necessary skills and experience to provide them, thereby ensuring better quality of healthcare provided. Minister for Health Vladimir Lengvarsky: This decree is very important because it primarily wants to increase patient safety and create conditions for improving the quality of institutional care provided. Each hospital will know its scope of institutional care provided, its technical equipment, staffing... and so the patient with the appropriate diagnosis will be hospitalized exactly where it belongs and where they can best help it.
By creating five levels of hospitals with defined ranges of healthcare provided through the established classification of institutional care, it will also ensure the efficient use of resources in the health system not only from the state budget, but also from funding from the plan of restoration and resilience of the Slovak Republic or structural funds. The decree of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic on the classification of institutional care was prepared in cooperation with professional working groups, was approved by the Categorisation Commission, in which all relevant professional associations and companies are represented, and its form is the result of seeking and finding mutual compromises. Complex material will be included in the inter-ministerial commentary procedure.