Healthcare in Slovakia

Healthcare in Slovakia has features of the Bismarck, the Beveridge and the National health insurance systems.

Current healthcare system has 3 health insurance companies, namely Union (12,4%), Dôvera (32,4%) and Všeobecná zdravotná poisťovňa (55,2%)(market share).

These insurance companies have contracts with outpatient clinics, hospitals, rehabilitation centres, pharmacies, etc.

The government pays health insurance for children, students, pensioners, invalids, people performing activities for a church, religious or charitable community etc.

[2] Medical procedures are assigned an artificial value in ‘points’ which is converted to real monetary value by the health insurance company.

Financial coverage, with 80% of spending covered by mandatory prepayment, was higher than the OECD average of 76%.

These facilities provide a wide range of health services, from primary care to specialised hospital treatment.

[7] The need to build a new faculty hospital at the Razsochy site in Bratislava has been discussed for a longer period of time.

It owns a network of hospitals, polyclinics, pharmacies and a health insurance company Dôvera.

Another controversies are the alleged lobbying among politicians and violation of the law to provide free treatment in their clinics.

[8] At the beginning of 2023, the Fiscal Responsibility Council made a projection of the evolution of the number of medical staff.

To reach this level, the number of doctors would need to increase by 4% in the long term compared to current trends.

The current situation is that medical faculties educate up to 40% of foreign students (announced plans are approaching 50%) at the expense of the needs of the Slovak health sector, which is contrary to the public interest.

A more serious problem will be the shortage of 'nursing' occupations, as the number of nurses will start to decline over the next few years due to the age structure and the shortage of young nurses, and the rate of decline will gradually accelerate over the next few years.

Increasing their wages and making changes to facilitate work-life balance, improving their skills and access to education is key.