Supreme Audit Office of the Slovak Republic

The Supreme Audit Office of the Slovak Republic warns not only the Ministry of Health, but also the Government of the Slovak Republic and members of Parliament that the availability of general outpatient care for adults and children may be endangered in the near future. The authority analysts ranked a low number of general practitioners for adults or a high average age of general practitioners for children and adolescents among the significant risk factors. One of the State tools for solving this society problem was meant to be a resident programme launched by the Ministry of Health in 2014. The national authority for external control, through its analytical unit, investigated whether the programme eliminated risks arising from the number and age of GPs. Based on the data obtained, the authority states that the resident programme has only partially fulfilled its strategic objective aimed to address the critical situation in the number of general practitioners in the field. The Ministry of Health has not evaluated its real contribution in detail; and this is one reason why its further extension to other specialised medical disciplines is debatable.

The full text of the press release about this issue in Slovak language is available here. Use the Google icon in the top bar for automatic translation.