ZAGREB, December 19, 2019 – A uniform calendar for the registration of patients for hospital examination, which is expected to make order and reduce waiting lists for nine medical procedures, has been launched this week, and for the time being it includes 42 of the country’s 64 hospitals, it was said at a news conference at the Croatian Health Insurance Institute (HZZO) on Thursday.
The hospitals included in this system have compatible information systems while the others would be integrated by May 2020.
The nine medical procedures are the ones for which currently waiting lists are the longest – MR and CT scans, Holter monitor, heart ultrasound, cardiac stress test, cataract surgery, breast ultrasound, thyroid ultrasound and gastroscopy, and there are plans to expand the list.
Patients will get medical appointments from their GPs while specific dates for procedures such as MR and CT scans, cataract surgery and gastroscopy will be allocated by specialists or hospital administrators.
A patient will be able to cancel their appointment via the eCitizen system or change the date of the examination or the hospital.
The uniform calendar of medical appointments will prevent the multiplication of medical appointments, which currently results in unrealistically long waiting lists, and making an appointment by using the patient’s personal identification number will automatically prevent scheduling more than one examination of the same type in a different hospital, HZZO director Lucijan Vukelić said at the news conference.
The uniform calendar consists of red, yellow and green lists into which doctors enter appointments, with the red list designated for priority or urgent appointments, for patients who have to be scheduled for an examination within a period of 14 days.
The yellow list refers to appointments that are not urgent but have to be made so as to prevent causing harm to the patient’s health by making them wait longer than prescribed by doctors.
The green list refers to procedures a patient can wait for a longer period of time or to regular check-ups.
More health news can be found in the Lifestyle section.
