Numerous demand for recovery abroad, due to lack of medical services in Kosovo

The number of those who have received financial support to be treated abroad for 2019 is 1436 patients, while only at this beginning of the year, financing from the programme for medical treatment outside Kosovo's public health institutions has asked for 152 people. There are also thousands of citizens who are treated abroad, covering their own expenses.

So has the director of the Fund for Health Insurance, Fatmir Plaqiqiqi, who told Kosovo Press, that mainly these medical treatments are conducted in Turkey, Macedonia, Albania, Germany, etc.

Plakiqi has said that at the beginning of this year patients with cancer and eye disease are led by demands for treatment abroad.

Predestination diseases, tores that are number 62 to be followed by the ophthalmous eye disease because they're still accepting goods and equipment that puts all the services performed in ophthalmology. We have part of the injuries and poisonings that are a total of 11. While as a number to the moment we're talking it is 152 cases”, Plaqi said.

While talking about the large number of patients who benefited from the program for health treatment outside public institutions, the head of the Health Insurance Fund «indicates that because of investments in the Cardiology Clinic, the demands of heart disease patients have been significantly reduced.

We had a total of 1436 cases in 2019 that were approved, few cases that were refused have, for example, been dissoned by administrative instruction, or there have been cases when it was rejected by the medical commission or by the treatment board. It is noteworthy that we have a falling trend in cases that come apply to us especially in those clinics that have already started offering the KKUK service. The concrete case is in Cardiology, if we take a comparison, we see that in 2017 how many cases of cardiology has been referred to, we see the outcome of this service at KKUK. In 2017 we have a total of 464 who are referred to in consulous thoughts at the Fund, while in 2019 there are a total of 45 cases”, the director of the Health Insurance Fund noted.

The largest number of patients since 2019 requested financing for treatment abroad are those of the Ophthalmology Clinic.

This, according to the director of the Health Insurance Fund, has been due to lack of equipment and the failure to include certain drugs on the essential list.

There are complicated orthopedic orthopedic cases, and even oncology is largely a malignant disease. We have Toraque surgeons, there are cases that do not have enough human capacities or that do not have equipment or conditions. They refer patients to take the service out of public institutions. It is noteworthy that by 2019, Placipati was expressed as the head of the ophthalmology clinic“.

He even says that 6m euros is the budget earmarked for the programme for medical treatment outside Kosovo's public health institutions is incompatible with patients' demands.

And from the USKKUK Information Office, they say that references abroad mainly to diseases for which no treatment is provided at QKUK clinics.

This office in writing response to Kosova Prees made it known that transplant cases, acute leukemia mainly are those that refer to healing outside public institutions.

“Under KKUK clinics, there are medical consultations that in cases when treatment cannot be provided in clinics, then refer through a patient's form for treatment outside public institutions. The reference is made to the Health Insurance Fund, where even the patient sends the forumari for application for treatment outside public institutions. The references are primarily for transplant cases, acute leukemia as serious cases, but also diseases for which the current treatment is not provided at QKUK clinics”, the letter said.

On the other hand, the patient rights association only solutions to lower the number of requests for treatment abroad see the need for functioning health insurance.

The director of this association, Besim Kodra, says of Kosova Preiss, that in Kosovo there is still no list of medical services that disclosed which medical services are offered in Kosovo, which is not.

According to him, lack of efficiency for some medical services within public institutions in Kosovo is also happening because of the lack of drugs.

The selection for this would be the beginning of the implementation of the Health Insurance Law. Even so, it had to promote the Fund to make a list of services being performed in Kosovo. There is not yet a list of services for what is done in Kosovo, and what is not so makes it very unclear who needs to be financed and who does not.... Another problem for out-of-country treatments and material supplies and drugs is that in the Orthopedic Clinic in many cases we've seen that the Clinic has released a confirmation because this disease is not treated to us because of the lack of material and if we have it, we're going to do it”, Kodra said.

Numerous demands for overseas service have been available in the year 2018, where about a thousand and 432 people were spent on it within that year.