By: Moja Dolenjska
In early May, a new regulation on scheduling and waiting times, issued by Health Minister Valentina Prevolnik Rupel, will come into effect. With it, the government has extended the time frame for conducting individual medical examinations, apparently aiming to reduce waiting lists only on paper.
For instance, with this regulation, the government extends the waiting time for the “very urgent” level from the current 14 days to 30 days. This means that patients will now wait 16 days longer to see a specialist for an examination than before.
The ministry justifies this by explaining that in the past, the proportion of issued referrals with the urgency level “very urgent” increased the most at the expense of reducing the proportion of referrals issued with the urgency level “regular”. “It has been found that (also) in providers who do not record unacceptable waiting times at the ‘urgent’ and ‘regular’ urgency levels, they do record unacceptable waiting times at the ‘very urgent’ urgency level. This means that providers who do not have long waiting times still cannot offer appointments at the ‘very urgent’ urgency level within a timeframe shorter than 14 days. Therefore, at this urgency level, the longest permissible waiting time is extended from 14 to 30 days,” they state.
This only confirms that it is an administrative measure to reduce waiting lists, which will, however, result in a doubling of the time patients with the “very urgent” urgency level should receive healthcare services.