By:Vida Kocjan
We have reported that as of January 1st, 2024, mandatory health contributions have been introduced, replacing voluntary supplementary health insurance.
Some difficulties have been reported in the transition from voluntary to mandatory health insurance, particularly in doctor’s offices and pharmacies, where health cards are not functioning properly. The display indicates that individuals do not have paid insurance, even though further checks reveal that this is not the case, and all obligations have been settled.
The issues with using health cards have been observed even before the New Year’s holidays. In pharmacies, users were reportedly questioned about the problem when picking up medications, and manual data entry from the card to the system was necessary.
We reached out to the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia (ZZZS) to inquire about the situation.
Damjan Kos, the Head or Director of the Information and Public Relations Sector, explained that as of January 1st, 2024, the display of data on supplementary health insurance on the card or in the information systems of healthcare service providers has been discontinued. He assured that the online information system managed by ZZZS operates smoothly and without errors, as stated on their website. However, our further investigation did not yield more detailed information beyond the assurance that everything is “working”.
Kos also mentioned that pharmacies and all other healthcare service providers can seamlessly verify the validity of mandatory health insurance, which is a prerequisite for exercising the rights of insured persons, now covered 100% by mandatory health insurance.
He confirmed that ZZZS has “detected minor issues in adapting the information systems of individual healthcare service providers based on oral checks, which they need to resolve independently with their IT provider”.