How to organize the hospital network so that both the wolves are fed and the sheep are safe? This question has arisen for the Ministry of Health, which is trying to find solutions for the hospital reform during negotiations with the heads of medical institutions, local governments, and organizations related to medicine, writes Latvijas Avīze.
However, there are still no clear and understandable answers to the questions raised. At the meeting of the Latgale subcommittee of the Saeima on October 28, former parliamentary secretary of the Ministry of Health Dace Klavina stated that there are many "misunderstandings" and interpretations regarding the reform of the hospital network proposed by the ministry. According to her, "currently, no document mentions a hospital where any service would develop or not develop in the future."
The ministry will continue to work on reconciling the developed report and will try to take all objections into account. However, there are many, and they are significant. Despite this, the ministry intends to present its informational report to the government this month so that it can be adopted by the end of the year, and the division of inpatient medical institutions into levels and medical services could be reviewed by June 1, 2026.
By 2029, the ministry has committed to assessing the quality of healthcare services when planning hospital funding, in order to purposefully strengthen those medical institutions that operate more efficiently, rather than maintaining all hospitals equally regardless of results. However, the Ministry of Finance believes that the reform cannot be carried out without knowing how much funding will be required for it.
The transition from a five-level hospital system to a three-level one is aimed precisely at ensuring that people can receive reliable and quality medical care in all hospitals, so that there is actually staff there, rather than medical services that exist only on paper. Data from the Ministry of Health shows that the number of patients in hospital emergency departments is increasing, especially in higher-level inpatient facilities, while the flow of patients in lower-level medical institutions is decreasing.
As noted by the chairman of the Latvian Hospital Society, Evgeny Kaleis, there are just under 600,000 people living in Riga, and about 370,000 in the suburbs of Riga, which together make up half of Latvia's population. Therefore, it is quite logical that the university hospitals located in Riga account for almost half of the volume of hospitalizations.
The chief physician of the Riga Eastern Clinical University Hospital, Yuri Nikolaenko, is concerned about a long-standing unresolved issue: there are no lower-level hospitals in Riga where patients who no longer need to stay in the university hospital could be transferred.
