CLK said the current fee of 90 crowns is very low, and does not fulfil its regulatory function. Photo credit: Freepik.
Prague, Nov 21 (CTK) – The fee for emergency health care does not fulfil its regulatory function and should be increased from 90 to 200 crowns, the president of the Czech Medical Chamber (CLK), Milan Kubek, told Czech Television today.
CLK approved the resolution demanding the rise in the fee last week.
Kubek said the fee was not the most important problem faced by emergency departments at the time their system was collapsing. Nevertheless, the CLK congress agreed on raising the fee.
Health Minister Vlastimil Valek (TOP 09) said if CLK was raising the problem, he would open negotiations within the government.
CLK warned of a decline in access to and quality of medical care due to the Health Ministry’s directive defining healthcare prices for 2023, which guarantees an 8% rise in health insurance payments to care providers, while CLK sought a 13% rise.
CLK said that the directive fails to cover care providers’ increased costs caused by the high inflation rate, and does not enable a just increase in medical workers’ wages.
CLK said the current fee of 90 crowns is very low, and does not fulfil its regulatory function.
Kubek said the health system was burdened more by patients arriving at emergency departments in walk-in services, though paramedics in which there are no doctors who might judge whether the illness really needed to be hospitalised.
The regulatory fees were introduced in January 2008. Previously, there had been fees for doctors, days in hospital and for urgent care.
However, the former two were later cancelled and only the third has remained.
