120 Hungarian hospitals have received prepayments worth HUF 14.6bn

2010-02-11

On 9 December 2009, 120 Hungarian medical institutions received prepayments amounting to HUF 14.6bn (€53.3m) from the National Health Insurance Fund (OEP), Barbara Molnar, the OEP’s spokesperson, has announced. She stated that the above move would enable the institutions to pay wages to their employees on time. She also added that this amount would be deducted from the financing resources to be received by the hospitals in January.
With reference to the agreement on hospital funding, on 9 October the Hungarian government agreed to release HUF 4.5bn (€16.4m) from the previously locked amount of HUF 13.3bn (€48.5m) and transferred it to medical institutions.
Moreover, the budget planned for 2010, originally HUF 719bn (€2.6bn), has been increased to HUF 757bn (€2.7bn). The amount of HUF 6bn (€22m) was already paid out of turn to the hospitals on 10 January according to Barbara Molnar. The terms of financing have also been changed, as the institutions are to receive payments every second instead of every third month. Because of the above modification, the hospitals are to receive two payments in January. According to Imre Varga, President of Specialized Clinics Association Medicina2000, the above described actions only helped the medical institutions to survive but the actual problem hasn’t been solved and radical changes need to be urgently introduced into the funding system.