Congress report - European Health Forum Gastein

Special Interest Sessions
controlled, both through a well-developed surveillance mechanism as well as through
interventions (vaccinations). Slovenia's obvious lagging behind EU is in the areas of alcoholrelated
conditions and injuries (both accidental as well as suicides). In any case, Slovenia
looks forward to a harmonised effort in defining priorities in health care at the European
level.
Slovenia has a longstanding tradition of good quality health services. These will, however,
become scrutinised with standardised tools when the accession gets closer to completion.
Full harmonisation of postgraduate training of physicians and dentists has been reached with
programmes co-ordinated by UEMS. As there have been high increases in salaries of these
two groups of professionals over the past 5 years, the financial incentives for physician
movement might not be as strong as in some other accession countries. There should be,
however, a rather important interest in patient movement to the neighbouring countries. That
is possible even today but with several restrictions and left to the ultimate decision of the
national health insurance company.
Hospitals are still all publicly owned but that does not exclude their need to become
prepared for an organised presentation on the common European market. They will have to
work actively and intensely to get adequately accredited to be able to take part in that
competition.
Public health needs a serious redefinition and reorganisation. That is true for its coming
closer to the current European trends and for its internal organisation. The first steps have
been taken – there is a joint, harmonised programme of Public health medical specialty
training that will be adopted shortly and preparations for a national School of Public Health
have also started.
As much as the development of certain European structures seems reasonable and,
potentially, even necessary, Slovenia would not be comfortable about seeing supranational
bureaucratic structures which would try to dominate the member states. That was the main
negative experience of living in the former State. Still, there are certain system solutions
where Slovenia's experience can be successfully shared with other countries:
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- an effective and comprehensive information system to support the vaccination
programmes
- an extensive reporting system for the national health and health services statistics.
It would be important, though, to discuss and reassess the issues related to a common
minimum package of services publicly financed and available since that harmonisation seems
to be warranted, too, in spite of some earlier reserves about that.
Conclusions
1. The accession to the European Union is an exciting and demanding process that
has both its challenges and advantages as well as uncertainties.
2. Health care delivery should be standardised in quality of services and in the
minimum package available to the European citizen.
3. A European surveillance system should be developed supported by standardised
indicators.
4. Potential brain drain needs to be assessed and forecasted where and if possible.
5. Providers should be enabled to compete at the common health care market.
6. Public Health's role needs to be reaffirmed by modernising it, standardising its
guidelines and ensuring effective responsibility of the State.