Reducing the outflow of funds for medical treatment abroad and orthopedic devices, as well as establishing a more efficient system for controlling sick leave, will be among the main priorities of the new management of the Health Insurance Fund (HIF), said HIF head Zlatko Perinski.
He informed that working groups are already being formed to analyze the most critical areas in the Fund’s operations, and if additional financial resources are needed to implement the measures, they will be provided.
The largest financial outflow, according to Perinski, is in medical treatment abroad, for which the Fund allocates MKD 500 million annually. He pointed out that the current system is inefficient, because one case is processed by three different sectors, without continuity and unified control.
“We will form a special working group that will analyze cases from this and previous years. The success of interventions is not measured, nor is an analysis made of which clinics provide the best results, which leaves room for possible abuses,” Perinski said.
The second priority is the control of sick leave. The HIF headnotes that the Fund has not yet conducted checks on sick leave older than 12 months, although according to the law they should not last that long. Currently, cases of sick leave lasting from one to three years, from three to five years, as well as longer than five years are being checked.
