The decree of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic establishing the percentage for each type of healthcare and the minimum total amount of the total amount of healthcare expenditure in the budget for individual health insurance companies for 2023 was published on Thursday in the Journal of Laws https://www.slov-lex.sk/legal-regulations/EN/ZZ/2023/100/20230330
It shows that the health sector will have EUR 1.72 billion this year, i.e. 27% more financial resources than budgeted last year. For healthcare it will be 950 million euro more than in 2022.
The evolution of health revenue and expenditure was also influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, which was reflected in the expected reality of 2022. These include, in particular, expenditure relating to economic mobilisation, an extra charge for making it difficult to carry out work on so-called COVID departments, the purchase of vaccines, the procurement of antigen tests or the purchase of medicines, but also the re-increase in the use of healthcare after a pandemic.
The expected reality of 2022 has become the basis for the draft budget for 2023. To this basis was added:
- No-policy-change expenditure growth that takes into account wage growth according to automatic wage valorisation, inflation and drug consumption growth
- budget also envisages the impact of ageing populations
- additional expenditure has subsequently been added, such as government-approved increases in the salaries of health workers in institutional healthcare beyond wage valorisation, support for innovative treatment or support for long-term care.
Health care areas are also quantified in budgeting, where higher value for money could be achieved, such as:
- cost-effectiveness of medicines
- support for the entry of generic and biosimillary medicines into the Slovak market
- reduction of excess laboratory and imaging tests
- and 20 other expenditure review measures
The total expenditure in the health sector in 2023 should thus amount to EUR 8.1 billion. These expenditure consists mainly of public health insurance expenditure, expenditure of the chapter of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic and resources of the Recovery and Resilience Plan. Total public health insurance expenditure is expected to be EUR 7 billion, of which EUR 6.8 billion are directly healthcare expenditure.
This amount is distributed among the three health insurance undertakings according to their share of available resources, taking into account the risk of their strain through the redistribution mechanism and after deducting the estimated expenditure on the operational activity or expenditure on taxes and execution. The General Health Insurance Institution will have at its disposal 63,87 percent of the available resources, the Trust insurance company 27,46% and the Union insurance company 8,67%.
The draft "redistributive decree" translates into practice the budgeting of public health insurance expenditures into material areas such as institutional health care or general outpatient care. The aim is to allocate resources to priority areas in the health sector or to ensure expenditure growth in line with legislation and current public finance options.
The government of Slovakia will travel to institutional health care by 29 percent of the resources, i.e. 553 million. more than the actual expenditure last year. In order to provide outpatient healthcare, 20% more resources have been allocated, an increase of 284 million. EUR versus 2022.
Minimum total amounts in euro for each type of healthcare for each health insurance undertaking for 2023 can also be found in the Annex.