General Practitioners Discuss Health Care Digitisation with Minister Sasko

Bratislava, January 14 (TASR) - Representatives of general practitioners who treat adults met Health Minister Kamil Sasko (Voice-SD) on Monday (January 13) to discuss several topics, with the priority being the digitisation of Slovakia's heath-care system, TASR has learnt from a statement made by Slovak General Practitioners Association (SVLS) president Monika Paluskova. "At the invitation of the Health Minister, representatives of both professional societies of general practitioners who treat adult patients met at the Health Ministry of the Slovak Republic on January 13, 2025. The meeting was attended by Health Minister Kamil Sasko, both state secretaries of the Health Ministry, Ladislav Slobodnik and Michal Stofko, representatives of various sections of the Health Ministry, and the National Health Information Centre (NCZI)," stated Paluskova The main topic of the meeting was the digitisation of Slovakia's health-care system with a focus on the safety of both patients and doctors. "It should be clearly stated that an obligation to join the electronic health care system has applied to all health-care providers since January 1, 2018," noted Paluskova. She highlighted that only about 70 percent of providers are registered in the electronic health-care system at the moment, however. "As a result, doctors can't see their patients' discharge reports from hospitals, and hospital doctors don't have access to test results from outpatient clinics. They often don't even know where the patient has been examined or who did this and when," she explained. The SVLS asked the minister to set up a system for connecting outpatient clinics and hospitals to the electronic health-care system so that it would be realistically enforceable. "The primary concern is the safety of patients and doctors when providing health care. It cannot be considered acceptable if a doctor doesn't know where and when the patient has been treated, who prescribed which medications, or the results of their laboratory tests," stated Paluskova, adding that the ministry has declared that it will address the situation. lin/df