The issue with the private hospital "Mommy and Me" is whether it meets the legal requirements, whether the data presented are real and whether the financial interest of the investor is served more than the public interest and the need to create another hospital.
This is what lawyer Maria Petrova, a doctor and lawyer, specialist in medical law, told the BNR.
According to Dr. Ilko Semerdzhiev, former acting Minister of Health and former manager of the Health Fund, there is no legal reason for refusing to build the hospital:
"This need is assessed by many specialized institutions. For almost two years, they have been doing this analysis. As a result, in the very application to disclose the hospital and to obtain a permit, two opinions were obtained from the Executive Agency "Medical Supervision", two opinions from the NHIF, also from the BLS, based on which the Minister of Health has issued the permit", Semerdzhiev believes.
According to him, after a case in the Administrative Court "the minister or the Council of Ministers will be convicted and this permission will be reviewed again, but after a while".
According to Dr. Semerdzhiev, the only formula for stopping the leakage of public resources from the health system is:
"The NHIF money follows the patient's choice. Where the patient goes and is satisfied with the medical care, that is where the medical service rendered is paid for. Structures are currently being funded, not services. Therefore, the structures multiply. If we finance only services, the patient will choose with his feet which hospitals will remain in Bulgaria and which will not.
The second part of the formula is that the system is publicly underfunded and it takes from the citizen. Unlike the EU countries, Bulgarians pay the most for health care. A very radical reorganization is needed, and this is done through political decisions. We need to bring back the regulation of the user fee, adequate, and say that nothing else is paid extra, but at the expense of this we increase the public expenditure on health care.
Lawyer Maria Petrova expressed the opinion that the Law on medical facilities should be changed, because the conditions to which they must meet are very far from the European ones and "this is a prerequisite for increasing their number":
"Not every three-story condominium on a corner should be called a general hospital. All the current ones who are in this hypothesis, I would give them a sufficient period to go to outpatient care and restructure them in medical centers. I would bet more on outpatient care through prophylaxis and prevention".