Today, President of Latvia Egils Levits and Health Minister Līga Meņģelsone met at the Riga Castle to discuss Minister’s plans for improving healthcare management and adding strategic impetus for future development.
Meeting focused on medium-term government budget planning and urgent need to move towards sustainable and transparent health financing model to reassure medical community and general public and create better understanding of how systems work and will perform in future. President Levits and Minister Meņģelsone both underlined that efficient healthcare will promote public trust in government.
Health Minister shared information about health expenditure planning principles, impact on public health and benchmarking against other Baltic countries and Finland. Earmarking of compulsory social contributions was another topic discussed during the meeting. Share of contributions for health spending should increase, like in Estonia. According to Minister Meņģelsone, earmarking of a bigger share of social contributions for healthcare would promote employers’ and employee support towards social insurance and reduce shadow economy.
On the payment of healthcare professionals, Minister promised that a new compensation system will be developed this year. One of the objectives is to create a fairer compensation system for medical professionals.
One of Minister’s priorities is a better healthcare management and digital transformation, Līga Meņģelsone emphasised. According to Minister, e-health task force for getting national e-health system back on track and development path has already started to take shape. Telemedicine is one of key development priorities as it would improve care available to patients with chronic conditions and overall availability of specialists. It would also facilitate international peer to peer consultations.
Stronger primary care and general practices are also among Minister’ s priorities. Subsidising of third nurse to deal with patient files, digital applications and patient notification systems would, for example, allow GPs to devote their focus to actual treatment of patients.
President asked about the progress with creation of internationally certified Cancer Centre in Latvia. Cabinet of Ministers regulation adopted on December 2022 delegates Riga Eastern University Hospital to start work on the opening of National Cancer Centre with public investments from European Union Recover and Resilience Facility.
Meeting also addressed the problem of weakening health literacy among young people. Minister Meņģelsone promised to meet with Cabinet colleague responsible for education and science to discuss teaching of health literacy in schools.
President of Latvia praised joint initiative of health and welfare ministers for development of palliative and hospice care.
Egils Levits underlined the importance of locking government bodies into a coordinated information system advising residents on all healthcare and social services available in case of specific health complications, such as services available to disabled, patient care and other options.
President Levits and Minister Meņģelsone talked about healthcare support from Latvia to Ukraine. Minister has met with Latvian microsurgeons who did great service to Ukraine and helped treat wounded troops. Yesterday, during a conversation, Ukrainian health minister has also asked Latvia to help train its rehabilitation specialists, Minister Meņģelsone added.
President of Latvia also raised the issue of training and employment of young medical interns. Ministry should make sure interns have opportunities to put their skills to practice and help solve current problems in the system and build future healthcare for Latvia.
Officials also talked about healthcare levels and need to build a closer cooperation between Health Ministry, national hospitals, local governments and regional hospitals in their area.
