The Ministry of Health has presented a draft of changes to the Public Health Service Network, which is intended to enable more flexible work for medical teams, increase specialist capacities and expand palliative care. The proposal still needs to go through public consultation, and the changes have not yet been adopted.
According to the draft, one team could work at multiple locations, spending part of its working time at each, while totalling full-time working hours. The change would cover family or general medicine teams, preschool children's health care teams, women's health care teams and teams of polyvalent dental medicine. The Croatian Health Insurance Fund (HZZO) could contract one team to work at two locations, usually adjacent ones, even when the Network does not pre-assign a specific team to an individual location.
Such a model could be important in rural areas and smaller settlements where there are not enough patients or health workers for a separate full-time practice. Lika-Senj County is spatially large, and the population is distributed among numerous distant settlements. The possibility of the same team working in multiple clinics could help in organising more accessible primary health care. However, this does not mean that every place would get a doctor every day. The actual impact will depend on the final text of the Network, HZZO contracts, available staff and decisions by health institutions. The published draft does not list specific Lika locations where this model would begin to be applied, nor are specific new practices in Lika-Senj County confirmed.
The Ministry states that the number of specialist-consultative examinations increased from 8.4 million in 2021 to more than 10 million in 2024. The draft allows for the establishment of up to 30 per cent additional specialist teams based on actual needs. Teams would be contracted based on HZZO analysis, with the consent of the Ministry of Health, usually for one year. This is not an automatic 30 per cent increase in every hospital or county, but the number of additional teams would depend on proven needs and the availability of professional staff.
The draft also provides for a unified presentation of palliative care and the possibility of increasing capacities by up to 20 per cent in counties, or up to 35 per cent in the City of Zagreb. The number of palliative beds in health centre inpatient facilities would increase from 130 to 166. The possibility of a mobile palliative team operating at the Zagreb Children's Hospital has also been proposed.
The Ministry announced that the proposed solutions will be open for comments for 30 days on the e-Consultation portal. After the consultation, the draft may be amended before the final decision is made.
