Hospitals Association: open treatment market hazard to the less fortunate

Photo: Toomas Huik / Postimees

According to Estonian Hospital Association head Urmas Sule, opening of medical treatment market implies hazard of health services becoming harder to access for those worse off financially.

Starting this fall, European medical treatment market opens up, offering Estonian patients the option to pay their way forward in waiting lists. True: to begin with, this only relates to knee and hip joint surgery. Initially, people will have to pay for the operations, later compensated by Health Insurance Fund.

Urmas Sule said that as the treatment market opens up, all nuances ought to be thoroughly considered, well discussed and decisively solved. In his estimation, the current system would equal double waiting lists – a situation harmful to people worse off financially. Indeed, all patients may suffer.

«Double waiting lists will be formed. Think for yourselves... Everyone will agree – should a situation like that occur, the banks will immediately arrive at the scene. Complex circumstances may develop, and all may come to harm as a result of that,» explained Mr Sule.

Writing in Postimees, private hospital Fertilitas chief Ivo Saarma proposed the following: at the conclusion of every treatment case, people should be presented the bill so they would get an understanding of the actual size of health care costs. In Mr Saarma’s estimation, Estonians miserably fail to appreciate what is being offered by the country’s current system.

Mr Sule disagrees. According to him, the patients are not overly troubled by failure to grasp the sums of money involved in treatment; rather, it is difficult for them to enter the medical treatment system at all.

«We have patients with bills of a million euros a year. What would we achieve by telling them that they have a rare disease and that their treatment costs amount to a million euros?» asked Mr Sule.

Mr Sule added that patients would mostly be interested in quality solutions to their problems. By quality, Mr Sule also means the time factor.

In his opinion, forwarding treatment bills might lead to unnecessary added bureaucracy – with some doctors able to present the invoice immediately, others not.

Often, various analyses have to be made, waiting for the results. In such cases, bills could only be presented after the case has been concluded.