ZAGREB, October 19, 2020 - A member of the government's Scientific Council, epidemiologist Branko Kolaric, has expressed concern about Croatia's healthcare system becoming overloaded due to a surge in the daily number of coronavirus cases.

Speaking in an interview with the public television service HRT on Sunday evening, Kolaric was asked to comment on warnings from the scientific community that there were between 50,000 and 100,000 infected people in Zagreb and that over the next week Croatia might see 2,000 new infections daily, from the current 1,000.

Noting that he did not know what these estimates were based on, Kolaric said that it was possible that the number of daily cases would reach 2,000. "We have come from 500 to 1,000 daily infections and it is not impossible for this number to grow to 2,000," he said.

The epidemiologist said that the present attitude of the public towards the epidemiological measures in place and their adherence to these measures could lead to the public health system overloading. He said it was questionable whether the present measures were enough to reduce the number of new infections, expressing concern that the health system might become overburdened soon.

Today 548 people in Croatia are hospitalised for COVID-19, in neighbouring Slovenia the University Clinical Centre in Ljubljana is almost filled to capacity, while the Czech Republic has agreed with Germany on the possible treatment of its patients in Bavaria and Saxony, it was said.

Speaking of the number of hospitalised cases in Croatia, Kolaric said that the focus now was on COVID-19 cases and that there was less hospital capacity for treatment of other diseases.

Commenting on the interviewer's remark that the measures in place in Croatia were considerably milder than those elsewhere in Europe and whether tighter restrictions could be expected, Kolaric said that such decisions fell within the remit of the national coronavirus response team, but that he believed the measures would have to be tightened.

Health minister calls for more coronavirus testing points in Zagreb

Health Minister Vili Beros has called on the Croatian Public Health Institute, the Fran Mihaljevic Hospital for Infectious Diseases and the Andrija Stampar Teaching Institute for Public Health to urgently organise additional COVID-19 testing points in Zagreb so that people would not have to wait in kilometres-long lines.

"Our aim is to reduce the kilometres-long lines of people waiting to get tested. I am confident that all the competent authorities will find the way and space for additional testing," Beros said on Facebook on Sunday. 

In the last 24 hours, 286 new coronavirus cases have been identified in Zagreb and 830 people have been ordered to self-isolate. Currently, the number of active cases in the city stands at 1,336 and 6,410 people are in self-isolation.

ZAGREB, June 17, 2020 - Finance Minister Zdravko Maric said on Wednesday the healthcare system's debt in the last quarter reached HRK 9 billion and announced changes and reforms necessary to make the system financially tenable.

"It's still not ten billion but the debts are rising. Given the coronavirus, it's normal that we had additional needs to finance healthcare. The system turned out to be very good in terms of the functioning of doctors, nurses and other staff, but at the same time the financial circumstances are such that it is necessary to make certain changes, reforms so that the system becomes financially tenable," he told reporters after an inner cabinet meeting.

Asked about the amount of the debt, Maric said that in Q1 2020 it was HRK 9 billion.

March 3, 2020 - The rate of obesity among the adult men in Croatia is highest among the EU states, Croatian Institute for Public Health reported and warned the public about the negative consequences of that situation.

On March 4th, the World Obesity Day is observed all over the world, and that's what lead the Croatian Institute for Public Health to warn about the dangers of the obesity, and inform the public how it's one of the largest public-health risks in the 21st century, as over 650 million people globally deal with obesity.

According to the European Health Survey, every other adult in Croatia is either overweight or obese, and this rate can be linked with the reduction in life expectancy in Croatia of as much as 3.5 years in the next 30 years. The Institute is currently running a project "To Life Healthy" (Živjeti zdravo) though which the experts are trying to highlight the fact that the causes of obesity are varied, often more complex than just the bad food habits and irregular activities. Nobody is exclusively responsible for their obesity, as many environmental factors influence it. As in many other countries in the EU, the frequency of obesity is affected by the socio-economical inequalities. The World Health Organisation, however, warns that the rate of obesity in the EU has tripled since the 1980s.

In Croatia, one in three eight-year-olds is considered to be overweight, as the problem appears earlier in life for many people. Sanja Musić Milanović, the director of the Croatian Institute for Public Health Service for Promotion of Health said that weight problems are a logical result of the social circumstances. The healthy choices are rarely the easier choices, so we need to work on the environment where it's easier to adopt good habits. To tackle that, Musić Milanović says we need to adopt the multidisciplinary approach, which will modify the surroundings, support healthy lifestyle choices, provide opportunities for physical activities each day, make healthy ingredients more easily available and stimulate companies promote healthy habits.

As Novac/Frenki Lausic writes on the 4th of May, 2019, across 59 hospitals in Croatia, a total of 41,692 workers are employed, out of a total of 65,000 employees in the health care system, and the share of health workers in the total number of hospitals ranges from 70.1 percent in the Lovran Orthopedic Clinic, to 81.2 percent at the Clinical Hospital Centre in Zagreb.

From this data, it could easily be concluded that the hospital in Lovran operates poorly, as it has a large number of administrative staff who aren't directly involved in the care of patients, while KBC Zagreb is best placed financially because it has the least employees in administration. The reality is exactly the opposite: Lovran is the best Croatian medical institution financially, making it one of the ten major state hospitals operating without any losses, while KBC Zagreb has the biggest losses, the most obligations, and the most outstanding unpaid obligations.

However, data on the positive financial performance of hospitals may be correlated with the fact that the largest share of beds (in total capacity) is boasted by the clinic in Lovran, 82.61 percent, while OB Varaždin, one of the general hospitals with the worst business indicators, has the largest number of beds for long-term and chronic treatment, as well as palliative care (511 beds, or 49.18 percent of the total bed capacity of the hospital) due to the merging of the Novi Marof Hospital for Chronic Disease and the Hospital for Lung Diseases, and TBC Klenovnik OB Varaždin.

Therefore, the status and causes of success and failure in Croatia's hospitals need not be judged at first impression because each hospital is a special case for itself and requires a deeper analysis. However, there are also common denominators when it comes to the ''bad'' side of the Croatian hospital system, ranging from poor financial results, some bad patient outcomes, long waiting lists, and some institutions with literally horrible sanitation facilities.

In response to a survey conducted by Maja Vehovec, Ivana Rašić Bakarić and Sunčana Slijepčević, researchers from the Economics Institute back in 2012, which included one director of the Clinical Hospital Centre, three directors of general hospitals and two directors of special hospitals and representatives of the association of employers in the health system, it can be seen that when finances are in question, "the root cause of the problem with not paying costs is seen by directors as a continuous imbalance between the revenue received and the expense accounted for."

The basic part of the hospital's income is, in fact, the income that the hospital receives from HZZO, which are presented as the so-called "limits", ie, the annual budget funding which was introduced back in 1997.

For this reason, the authors point out that the limits to be allocated to hospitals should be based on objective indicators such as the number and types of surgeries, the number and type of outpatient examinations and the like, ie, the costs of each activity. The second management model in this part, based on the payment of the services provided, began being implemented back in 2015, at the time when Croatia was ruled by an SDP government, but such a practice was later stopped by the HDZ government, which returned the "limits" method the following year.

The Croatian Government and the Ministry of Health have decided to ''repair'' the situation this year by increasing their contributions to the healthcare system from 15 to 16.5 percent.

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Click here for the original article by Frenki Lausic for Novac/Jutarnji