Prague - The New Year brought a big novelty to Czech health care facilities - every patient has to pay 60 CZK for a day of hospital confinement. What is going to happen, though, when the patient will have to stay longer because of bad hospital food or an error treatment caused by a doctor?
Regarding the duty to pay the fee for a hospital stay, all hospitals are of the same view: they have to charge the patient no matter what, since it is their duty set by law.
"We have to charge the patient as stipulated by law no matter what. Only after the patient pays, we can try to solve the issue and decide whether we refund the patient or not," said Anna Nesvatbová of Brno Hospital for Aktuálně.cz.
Experts warn that very frequent so-called hospital infections may prolong a patient´s stay in the health-care facility by weeks, or even months. The costs then can go up to thousands of Czech crowns.
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Patients or litigators?
The Ministry of Health has not set up any special rules for charging these fees. If a patient claims the fees´ refund, the hospitals have to observe the same rules that are valid in other spheres too.
Infobox
What fees Czech patients have to pay
- 30 CZK for a regular check-up (doctors of various specialization and psychologist and logopedics)
- 30 CZK for a prescription and a medicine
- 90 CZK for a visit at an emergency
- 60 CZK for a day of stay in a hospital (and some other institutions)
Fees waived when...
- it is not a clinical check-up
- it is only a prevention check-up
- it is a laboratory and diagnostical check-up
- it concernes a special theraupetic treatment, dispensary care (gravely ill children or pregnant women), hemodialysis and blood donation
Source: The Czech Ministry of Health
"Should a hospital make an error, the patient has the right to claim the refund as part of financial reimbursement," explains the Ministry´s spokeperson Tomáš Cikrt.
And there are other cases hospitals are to solve potentially, for example: if the patient pays for a check-up and the doctor prescribes a hospitalization, the patient is entitled to a refund.
The patient has to pay 60 CZK for hospitalization, and the 30 CZK fee he pays for a check-up, is to be refunded to him.
Should anyone end up in a hospital due to someone else´s fault, for example if he is injured in a car accident, the patient has to pay for the fees at first and only later may claim a refund from the car crash offender.
"The person that gets you into a car accident, has to reimburse your incurred loss, including your healing costs. First the patient has to pay the fees to the hospital, doctors and pharmacies himself, and it is only up to him and his lawyer how much they will be able to recover," explains the Ministry of Health´s Information Booklet on Fees.
Charging the newborns
After the first days of collecting fees doctors who are tending to gravely ill infants pointed out a grave shortcoming in the law on hospitalization fees.
Seriously ill children should be exempted from paying the fees. The exception however covers only children from 1 to 18 years of age. Infants of up to one year are left out in the unfortunate wording of the manual's text.
"Collecting fees from infants is an absolute nonsense. The fees should regulate the health care, a kid like that has no choice whether he or she is to be born healthy or ill and whether to be hospitalized or not," believes Josef Mrázek of the Patients´ Association.
National broadsheet daily Mf DNES first drew attention to this legislative error.
