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The member of the Seimas, former Minister of Health Aurelijus Veryga, welcomes the intentions of the current Government to connect hospitals in the main Lithuanian cities.
According to him, the example of Kaunas, where large urban hospitals merge, shows that the merger would solve some problems in the health sector.
“Currently, Kaunas is the only city that has its main hospitals connected. (…) Now this big hospital can be a kind of donor, help smaller hospitals if they become branches, help doctors, help with competitions and other things, ”said A. Veryga on the LRT radio show“ Lietuvos diena ”on Saturday.
After merging Kaunas Clinical and Republican Kaunas Hospital in Kaunas last year, LSMU Kaunas Hospital was established.
At that time, in Vilnius and Klaipėda, according to the opposition representative “peasants”, there are several large hospitals with different founders and subordinates.
According to the politician, this encourages “destructive competition” between these treatment facilities. They, for example, attract doctors to each other.
“This should not be the case, they should act as a mechanism and if that happens it would definitely be an advantage,” the minister said.
The Department of Health (SAM) released a plan to restructure health care facilities this week. Among other things, the reform will aim to keep not many small hospitals in large cities, but a larger one.
To make the health system more efficient, the ministry proposes reducing the number of active treatment beds, but increasing the number of days the bed is actively used.
The reform presented to the Seimas Health Affairs Committee provides criteria on how many beds each hospital must have in order for its activities to be sustainable and economical.
The reform would also integrate an ambulance system.
This transformation would be financed with European funds. The Economic Recovery and Resilience Fund (FRR) provides € 268 million for this purpose. 530 million euros of investments from the European Union. euros.
Vygantas Sudaris, director of the Lithuanian District Hospital Association, claims that he has not conducted SAM’s assessment of the consequences of the reform.
“So far, we see that the main focus is on the future amount of money that will come from the EU structural funds, and that, in our head, is a way to absorb them,” Sudaris said. “Today, we do not see what the consequences of that reform will be.”
“Basically all we see is that the active treatment beds will disappear,” he added.
Sudaris said that the weakest point of the reform is the management of patient flows, but there are good things in the proposed reform.
“It will all depend on the reformers,” said a spokesman for the district hospitals.
The Ministry of Health has begun coordinating the reform with partners and additional working groups will be established to implement some parts of the reform.
Coordination of the project with the European Commission will begin in mid-August and is expected to end by the end of the year. In the last quarter of this year a government resolution is expected on the criteria and concept of networking.
During the fall session, reform-related legislative packages should be presented to the Seimas: the new Laws on ambulances and long-term care, as well as the amended Laws on insurance of health institutions and the health system.
It is also planned to propose modifications to transform the National Cancer Institute from a research institution into a service provider and integrate it into the health system.
The government, which began work on this reform last year, expects to complete it during the period, and the first funds for the agencies are expected to arrive in the first half of next year.
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