site.btaSupervisory Board Adopts 2018 Healthcare Budget Framework

Sofia, October 26 (BTA) - The Supervisory Board of the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) adopted the framework of the 2018 healthcare budget.

The budget projects 3,859,978,000 leva in health insurance revenues and transfers from other institutions. Seven million leva more have been allocated for primary out-of-hospital care, 222.3 million leva for specialized out-of-hospital care and 157 million leva for dental care. Nearly 1.825 billion leva have been budgeted for hospital care.

One billion leva will go towards medicines for out-of-hospital treatment, medical supplies and foods.

The Supervisory Board decided to unblock over 38 million leva from NHIF's reserves to pay for medicines and medical supplies in hospital care.

In a reaction, the Bulgarian Medical Association (BMA) expressed their satisfaction with the proposed funding increase for hospital care, where clinical pathway prices have remained unchanged for 10 years. "Despite the overall increase, we cannot stay indifferent to the fact that out-of-hospital services are considerably underrated," BMA added.

The association sees a continuing failure to take account of World Bank recommendations and National Health Strategy 2020 provisions aimed at building a fair, sustainable and quality-oriented healthcare system. BMA noted that, compared with the 2017 budget, the actual funding increase for 2018 is only 7.2 million leva for general practitioners, 3.5 million leva for out-of-hospital specialists, and 2 million leva for medical diagnosticians. It finds that the planned increase of the money for medicines is unreasonable, because this spending item will account for 26 per cent of the total healthcare budget.

"The insufficient resources for out-of-hospital care will worsen the quality of medical services, will create tension between patients and doctors, and will be a prerequisite for hospital bankruptcies," BMA warned.

The association insisted that its demands should be met as they correspond to the real needs of the people and the healthcare system which underpin BMA's own version of the healthcare budget proposed to the competent institutions back in July.

* * *

The Health Ministry announced a resumption of the centralized tender for hospital medicines. The bidding procedure will be conducted entirely online and will be only for anti-tumour medicines, the costs of which are reimbursed by NHIF to hospitals pursuant to Article 45, Paragraph 18 of the Health Insurance Act. The reason that the tender continues only for this type of medicines is because they make up one of the largest NHIF budget items. These are medicines that are used in hospital care and are covered by NHIF beyond the costs of clinical pathways and outpatient procedures.

The other medicines are included in the clinical pathways and are not paid for separately by NHIF. Therefore, the Health Ministry has removed all other medicines from the list for the tender and encourages hospitals to update their bids. After collating the information from the updated bids, the Ministry will launch another open online tender for the signing of framework agreements.