Prague, June 28 (CTK) – Unnecessary visits to doctors cost some 20 billion crowns a year in the Czech Republic, delegates to the 22nd WONCA European conference of general practitioners, held in Prague these days, told reporters today.
A Czech patient sees a doctor 11 times a year on average, while an Austrian seven times and a Swede three times only.
The situation in the Czech Republic could be improved if the powers of GPs were extended along with the number of medicines they are allowed to prescribe. At present, they can prescribe about a half of medicines registered on the Czech market.
There are some 6000 GPs in the Czech Republic with a population of 10.5 million.
Czech patients see a doctor more often than inhabitants of other European countries, which is the consequence of GPs’ limited competences, General Medicine Society chairman Svatopluk Byma said.
“Patients with a clear diagnosis are often sent to a specialist unnecessarily only because their GP does not have sufficient powers to prescribe the respective medicine to them,” he said.
One contact with a doctor costs some 400 crowns in the Czech system of public health insurance.
Consequently, if the number of visits to doctors were reduced in the Czech Republic to the level in the neighbouring Austria, the state might save about 20 billion crowns, Byma added.
GPs deal with 80 to 90 percent of all health troubles.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended that some 15 percent of the healthcare budget be earmarked for GPs’ work.
Outpatient specialists should cover 15 percent of health care and have 45 percent of the budget at their disposal, while teaching hospitals should provide 5 percent of care and get 40 percent of the budget, according to the WHO.
However, in the Czech Republic more than 50 percent of the healthcare budget go to hospitals.
Only some 6 percent have long been allocated to Czech GPs, while their administrative burden has been rising, Association of General Practitioners head Petr Sonka said.
The Health Ministry has promised to strengthen GPs’ powers, increase the number of medicines they can prescribe and raise their funding. This is why they expect these promises to be reflected in the ministerial decree on health care financial coverage for 2018.
Because of an agreement with previous health minister Svatopluk Nemecek (Social Democrats, CSSD), GPs gave up their planned protests and closing their surgeries last autumn.
The Health Ministry promised to raise payments to GPs by 2 percent in this year’s decree and strengthen their powers mainly when it comes to preoperative check-ups. The ministry was also to debate a review of the restrictions on prescribing drugs with health insurers.
According to data from the three largest health insurance companies, a GP’s surgery annually received about 1.8 million crowns on average in 2015, which was some 150,000 crowns a month.
However, up to 75 percent of this sum go to operational costs and mandatory payments, such as leasing, energy, nurses’ salaries, software, petrol and bookkeeping, Sonka said.
($1=23.290 crowns)
