Miklós Kásler said that around 2010 the length of the waiting lists in Hungary increased extraordinarily.
In 2013, about 70,000 people were on the waiting lists, this could be reduced to 28,000-26,000 by 2019 with very significant government support, he said.
" 2019 was an extremely dynamic year for the reduction of waiting lists, " emphasized the minister, who also pointed out that at that time Hungarian waiting lists were in the first third of European countries and showed approximately the same numbers as in Sweden.
He added that the coronavirus epidemic caused an increase in waiting lists, because surgeries that could be postponed everywhere, and in some countries the treatment of life-threatening diseases had to be postponed for a longer or shorter time.
In Hungary, all emergency cases, cancer and cardiac diseases had to be treated immediately, both in their diagnosis and therapy
Miklós Kásler emphasized.
According to the written summary distributed at the event, the government measure that has just been taken provides, on the one hand, the extension of the implementation of the priority waiting list reduction program until the end of 2022, and on the other hand, new, more favorable conditions for the settlement of services provided within the framework of the program, in order to enable as many service providers as possible to participate for those on the waiting list in care.
It is a general rule for both inpatient and outpatient care that the additional funding program can include care that was provided starting from September 1, 2021,
if the service providers completed 10/12ths of the surgical cases reported and accounted for in the period from March to December 2019, carried out in proportion to time, reported and accounted for, they wrote.
The amount of the financing fee has not changed, it is still 30 percent higher with regard to additional care, 80 percent of the additional funding is to be used for the personal benefits of the doctors and medical professionals who perform the surgeries and examinations, while 20 percent is to be used for the hospital's material expenses, the text states.
Speaking about the waiting lists of other countries, Miklós Kásler said that Eurostat does not collect data on waiting times covering all member countries, data on waiting times suitable for international comparison is only available in the OECD database, which is based on voluntary, annual data provision by the member states, so they are not available in all OECD are available in the case of a member country.
According to the minister, among the EU member states, Austria, Ireland, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Croatia, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Germany, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia do not keep or publish such data.
MTI
Cover image: Illustration / Photo: MTI / Péter Komka
