The Bulgarian Medical Union (BMU) proposes real-time checks on how public money is spent in healthcare, the doctors' organisation said. The checks should cover all participants and track every medical service that is reported and paid for.
The BMU wants the Ministry of Health to stop delaying and start work on preventive control. The union says the system must stop public money from being spent unlawfully. Inspections of medical facilities should go on, but real-time monitoring should be added to them.
It should follow public money all the way and make sure the National Health Insurance Fund pays for medical care that was actually given and drug treatment that was actually provided.
The union says a check that finds violations only after the service has been given and reported is not enough, as tension in the health sector grows. It says it has raised the problem and its proposal many times with health minister Katya Ivkova since she took office. So far the ministry has taken no concrete steps in this direction, the union says.
The BMU says work is going in the wrong direction, with reform proposals that do not deal with the real problems in the system.
The polling agency Trend carried out nationally representative surveys for the union. The BMU says they show that both the public and doctors rank better control of public money among the main issues facing the health system. The union says this match between what the public and doctors expect cannot go without a concrete answer.
The BMU says only such a model can protect insured people, honest doctors and medical facilities, and raise trust in the system at the same time.
If no action follows, the union says it will present and explain its position to higher levels of government.