To access secondary outpatient services, 100 million euros are needed

To ensure optimal waiting times for secondary outpatient services, an additional 100 million euros is needed at the first stage, said Aris Kaspārans, Director of the National Health Service (NHS), at a meeting of the Saeima Social and Labor Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

Kaspārans noted that this amount is divided into two parts - one is intended for ensuring the service itself, and the other is for increasing tariffs to ensure the availability of specialists.

Currently, 360 million euros are allocated annually for secondary outpatient services, but to bring the average waiting time for most services down to six months, an additional 100 million euros will be required.

Deputy Zane Skuinī-Rubene noted that the tariff for pediatric dentistry has been increased, but the queues have decreased only slightly. In her opinion, 100 million euros is a very large amount for the first step. She asked whether it is possible to prioritize the services for which tariffs should be increased, focusing on the services or specialists with the longest queues.

Opposition deputy Ramona Petraviča stated that she strongly doubts that 100 million euros can do anything to improve healthcare. The question is how many such steps will be needed to achieve results.

She reminded that last year, the healthcare sector was allocated an additional 275 million euros, and the Minister of Health reported that this money would be used to reduce queues for outpatient services and increase coverage for examinations and medical procedures. "It seems that the 275 million euros have fallen into a void, and no one has noticed any improvement," said Petraviča.

Kaspārans disagreed with her, stating that information about the use of funds can be found on the website. "One cannot agree that additional medications for cancer patients are 'a void' or something of that sort," said Kaspārans.

As reported, starting from November 20, the Latvian Center for Digital Health began expanding the functionality of electronic referrals so that all necessary referrals to a doctor can be made on the portal 'eveseliba.gov.lv'.

The approach of 'one referral - one appointment' means that a patient will be able to seek a specific service only at one medical institution, which will eliminate double appointments.

Currently, the share of patients who do not show up for appointments reaches 15-20%, which significantly affects the availability of services and the workload of healthcare institutions. The introduction of a unified appointment system is planned to begin in the fall of next year.