Battle plan to save healthcare? Good analysis, strategy is lame, experts say

“I observe with horror that the world we live in is coming to a close. We have two difficult decades ahead of us,” pointed out Ladislav Dusek, director of the Institute of Health Information and Statistics.

According to him, the previous governments were not prepared for the demographic changes in the society, especially the high proportion of the elderly population with many chronic diseases.

In fifteen years, there will be a significant reduction in the number of workers contributing jointly to the care of government insured persons, such as children, students, the unemployed or the elderly. The number of people over 80 will double, and health care costs will rise with it. Strong cohorts of pediatricians, general practitioners and nurses will retire, putting the availability of care at risk. Pressure on social-health services will also increase.

“Maintaining universal access to care will be a key goal over the next decade,” the roughly 120-page document says. Comment Called “Strategic Analysis of Health Sector Needs”, hundreds of pages are supplemented by numerous maps.

War Minister Válek pledged the strategy from the end of the year, calling it an essential document. The presented material describes in detail the problems of the Czech healthcare system and the many initiated changes, a major strategy for maintaining the system and its lack of funding.

“For this to be something that brings real changes to the Czech healthcare system, it is necessary to change things and address them significantly. It is more of a list of what we are going to deal with than how we are going to deal with it. This applies especially to the financing area,” the doctor and member of the government’s National Economic Council assessed Nowinki. Pavel Hroboň.

According to him, part of the concept draws attention to key challenges in the health sector, which is good. More about what the department is doing and what it can achieve at the end of the election period. According to Hrobón, there will be no time for major legal reforms.

“In my opinion, this is a communication tool, where you have an overview of what the Ministry of Health is doing and what to do until the end of the term. It is not a consensus strategy document. It seems to me like a semi-annual report,” added Michal Koščík from the SYRI organization. said.

“In the government, we now have a minister who ended his job because he couldn’t communicate. I see it as a group around the war minister explaining what they are doing,” he added.

Strategic Concept Health 2030 Already in 2019 Minister Adam Vojtěch (for ANO) presented it, which was approved by the government. It deals with practically the same subject – primary care reform, emphasis on prevention, responsibility of citizens for their health, strengthening of social care.

Válk’s proposal is extensively devoted to strengthening prevention, screenings and healthy lifestyle habits among the population. This is a long-term priority which, under the current government, should be linked to the introduction of individual accounts with insurance companies and rewards for visits for preventive tests and screenings.

“Overall, I think this document is a pleasant mosaic of pleasant statements, but it has no real impact. It does not follow previous strategies, does not reflect our obligations to the EU and does not take into account that the current technological revolution will have a significant impact on our health care” from the initiative on health law. Expert lawyer Aneta Bernardova thinks. For effective hygiene.

The department wants to improve access to care by strengthening insurance companies, financially incentivizing doctors and simplifying the education system. Care needs to be more interconnected.

Transformation awaits digitization. In addition to vaccinations, the EZKarta application will also feature application forms for exams and electronic health documents by the end of 2025. The government wants to monitor the quality of care and operations of hospitals more closely. He wants to introduce one-day care, centralization of more complex services, new prescribed procedures and operational recommendations.

Although the current leadership of the ministry is in its second year in power, it has criticized insurance companies that are not fulfilling their role in providing protection, the State Agency for Drug Control that cannot ensure the market’s resistance to failures, and the network of health services, which will be subordinated to the new State Health Service.

Opposition parties are expected to comment on the motion. They still don’t have time to read the detailed material. “The strategic analysis presented to us is still preliminary material, which will be further commented on. However, it is good that such material is created, but it should have happened much earlier, at the beginning of the minister’s term,” said SPD MP Karla Marikova.

Věra Adámková, spouse of the ANO movement, issued a similar statement.