Hospitals will receive a “digitalization payment” – information about patients will have to be entered electronically / Article

Data on patient examinations and doctor’s conclusions are still not entered electronically in many places. This means that examinations are often repeated without justification. To address this and other issues stemming from the inability to digitize data, a report approved by the government on Tuesday, April 30 requires hospitals to pay a digitization fee.

It would be 6.7 million euros in total for all Latvian hospitals this year, and 1.3 million euros each year.

Such a proposal sparked a heated debate in the government today.

“My concern is that now you will give state money to hospitals and each of them will build their own digital system, which will then need to be updated to join the centralized system,” said Prime Minister Evika Siliņa (“Jaunā Vienotība”).

Health Minister Hossam Abu Meri (“New Unity”) stated that after receiving the so-called digitization payment, hospitals will be obliged to enter epicrisis, laboratory test results and referrals in the electronic information system. If the hospitals are unable to do so, from April 1 of the following year, a withholding factor of 0.9 will be applied to the hospital for the entire amount of services provided in that month. If this obligation is not fulfilled for a few more months, the withheld amount will not be refunded to the treatment facility.

The Society of Hospitals objected to the criteria for dividing the digitization payment.

“The biggest objection is that it is calculated not against patients, but against finances. The higher the funding for hospitals, the higher the digital payment.

Simply put – the more expensive the implant is placed in the patient, the more the hospital is paid for the electronicization of the data,”

Daina Mūrmane-Umbraško, board member of the Latvian Hospital Society, explained.

Mūrmane-Umbraško expressed her concern in the Latvian Television program “Today’s question” that the informative report is pushing the system towards the impoverishment of regional hospitals. The report predicts that there will no longer be a 24-hour surgeon available in first-level hospitals, and currently there is an open discussion about the need for 24-hour anesthesiologists. They are said to be currently transferred to a day hospital, but payment is intended for service provision times. This means there is a risk that anesthesiologists will make less because they are not guaranteed a daily rate of pay.

“There is a risk that they will do less, and then in a year we will meet with the Ministry of Health and the National Health Service, who will say – you have a drop in surgical activity, so the surgeon must also be removed. We do not see how the ambulatory sector will develop. We see a decrease in the regions ,” said Murmane-Umbraško.

Although the hospital association has other objections, in general, the report prepared by the Ministry of Health on the development of the hospital network is evaluated positively in the association, as it focuses on the fact that additional funding has been found for hospitals.

“We will continue discussions, but the main thing for us is to move forward. We have to start doing something. We can’t just talk and talk all the time,” said the health minister.

It should be noted that the report approved by the government foresees not only the digitalization payment, but also the creation of a methodical management institution, which will, for example, develop treatment guidelines for the treatment of several diseases.

Hospitals will get extra funding this year to strengthen mainly emergency medicine and admissions departments and observation, or patient observation, services, according to a report approved by the government today. An additional 25.5 million euros are needed for the implementation of all of the above this year.