Health Systems in Transition - Hungary - World Health Organization ...

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Health systems in transition Hungary
The NPHMOS was formed in 1991 on the basis of the State Supervisory
Agency for Public Hygiene and Infectious Diseases and is headed by the
National Chief Medical Officer, who is appointed by the Minister of State for
Health (1991/1, 2006/22). The NPHMOS is organized on a territorial basis at
three different levels: central, regional and subregional (kistérség). Subregions
in Hungary are equivalent to level 1 of the local administrative units (LAU)
that are part of the of Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS)
system developed and used by the EU for statistical and other purposes. In
Hungary there are 175 subregions with a population between 6000 and 300 000
inhabitants, with the exception of Budapest, which has a larger population
and is considered both a county and a subregion. In 2007 the NPHMOS was
reorganized, resulting in its current territorial division: the county offices,
of which there used to be 19, were merged into 7 regional offices, and the
municipal offices were reorganized into subregional offices (2006/22).
At the central level, the NPHMOS is headed by the National Chief Medical
Officer, who is appointed by the Minister of National Resources based on the
recommendation of the State Secretariat for Healthcare. The Office of the Chief
Medical Officer directs, supervises and coordinates the work of the territorial
units of the NPHMOS and the nine National Institutes of Health, each of which
is responsible for a special area of public health, such as epidemiology, radiation
biology, chemical safety, environmental health and nutrition science (see section
5.1 for more details on the NPHMOS and public health).
The middle level of administration consists of seven regional offices, each
covering the population of two to three counties. At the lowest level, subregional
offices cover the population of 1 to 5 subregions, while Budapest has 12 district
offices. The organizational structure of NPHMOS before 2007 is depicted in
the 2004 HiT profile for Hungary (Gaál, 2004).
The State Secretariat for Healthcare also runs state hospitals, most of which
are sanatoria for medical rehabilitation. They accept patients from throughout
the country and are partly financed through the HIF.
The State Secretariat for Healthcare is responsible for coordinating and
supervising the education and training of medical and non-medical health
professionals; the responsibility for providing secondary and higher education
in the health sciences, however, falls within the remit of the State Secretariat
for Education. The State Secretariat for Healthcare plays only a limited
role in providing education and training, offering professional educational
programmes for nurses and other paramedical health workers through its own
training institute.