Condition and Tendencies

Since the changes in October 2000, both patients and employees in health care of Republic of Serbia, live in great expectation of major changes which will advance the quality of health care services and bring us closer to standards of the European Union.

It wouldn’t be true to say that nothing has been done. On the contrary, supply of equipment, projects within The European Reconstruction Agency (EAR), American Development Foundation (ADF), donations from many international and domestic organizations, have all softened a catastrophic situation in which our hospitals and health care centers have found themselves in the end of the 1990’s. However, the pillars on which health care of one society should lay, Health Care Protection law and Health Care Insurance law, haven’t changed since the start of the 1990’s. Drafts of these laws have been set long ago, but somehow they haven’t been passed yet. Although these drafts offer much better solutions than present laws, they had some negative reactions on public debates, especially from the private sector, because they leave “a lot of room for corruptive activities”.   

Now, we are in a situation that patients, like in the time of socialism, have a lot of rights, but the state doesn’t have the financial means to secure those rights. Health care is falling in debt, because the medication and the new equipment are expensive, means which are assigned are not enough to cover those costs, and still health care institutions are obligated to provide medical care for the citizens. Every health care institution is found in a paradox that it is better to work as less as possible, because then it spends only as much as it needs! This problem can be solved only if, as in some surrounding countries, the insurance money follows the patient, because in that case every institution would be interested in having as much patients as possible – in that way, competition would develop and it would bring progress to the quality of health care service.

Health care is now in overflow because of the implementation of rationalization and reconstruction measures. It is necessary to reduce over-sized capacities and plan the most optimal number of medical and non-medical staff. It is also necessary to draw up a new plan of the medical network, rank hospitals (regional, general, specialist and city), define a range of health care service provided in them, solve the question of founding (hospitals would go to the Province, health care centers to the local management) and similar, crucial questions necessary for the functioning of health care in general.

Out of the projects which are about to be undertaken, and which are supposed to bring work in the work unit of General Hospital of the Medical Center in Subotica to something called normal, the most important is the project of the European Reconstruction Agency. Namely, the credit of the European Investment Bank for the project of emergency reconstruction of health care institutions in Serbia, and which is realized through the budget of Republic of Serbia, is a base on which lay equipment renovating and reconstruction of some parts of the General Hospital.

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