After the success of the "Black Track" project, which visualized data on road injuries, its creator Martin Atanasov turned his attention to healthcare and created the "Diagnoza Bulgaria" platform that became so popular last week. On the air of "In Focus" on NOVA, he stated that the platform has already detected anomalies worth nearly 605 million leva for 2025 alone.
„Each of us is aware of the problems in Bulgarian healthcare. However, it is one thing to talk about them as rumors, and quite another for the data to speak to us in black and white. They show many anomalies not only in the clinical pathways, but also in the management of state and municipal hospitals, as well as in the way in which the NHIF finances private medical institutions“, said Atanasov.
According to him, the platform allows for the first time anyone to track what funds the Health Fund pays out, how public funds are spent and where questionable expenses arise.
„There are hospitals that pay 275-300 thousand leva per year for consulting services, even though they have their own legal advisors. There are also cases where the same medicine is purchased at a price up to ten times higher than in other hospitals,“ he pointed out.
Atanasov revealed that after the launch of the platform he held meetings with the management of the National Health Insurance Fund and the Ministry of Health.
“The Fund told me something that personally struck me - even if they see such anomalies, they have no mechanism to stop them if the procedures are formally followed. Therefore, the first step is more transparency and more open data“, he said.
According to him, dozens of signals are already being received from people in the system through the anonymous function of the platform, some of which will be provided to institutions and the media for verification.
“When we diagnose the problems - hence the name of the platform - we can now look for their solution“, emphasized Martin Atanasov.
He expressed hope that the public interest in “Diagnosis Bulgaria“ will lead to real changes, because “when we all see the real picture, we no longer have the right to close our eyes“.