Prague, July 3 (CTK) – The Czech Health Ministry will simplify the rules for maintaining health documentation to decrease the administrative load for doctors and nurses, Health Minister Adam Vojtech (for ANO) told journalists on Tuesday.
The ordinance containing the new rules will be issued next week and some of the rules will take effect on July 24, while the rest of them will become effective by November 1.
Vojtech explained that the medical staff should have more time to care for the patients thanks to the measure.
Administrative load has been a source of criticism by doctors and nurses for some time, Vojtech said.
According to the new ordinance, forms should not be uniform for all healthcare facilities and all treatments, but the documentation should be tailored to the care provided by the specific doctors.
“It is not appropriate to have a single form for banal treatments such as warts treatment and the same time for the consent with a heart transplantation,” Vojtech noted.
The period for which healthcare workers will have to archive the documents mandatorily will be also shortened, from ten to five years for gynaecologists and dentists and from 40 to 20 years for subsequent and long-term care in hospitals.
The delay of the effectiveness of some of the provisions is intended to allow part of the healthcare facilities the time needed to adapt to the new rules and train the staff.
Vojtech also mentioned that some facilities currently have stricter rules for dealing with health documentation than the ordinance requires. He called on them to make use of its new issue to simplify their internal rules.
Vojtech is to negotiate with directors of the hospitals directly established by the ministry to simplify the rules.
