President Signed New Deadlines for eHealth Projects

Deadlines for health projects will be postponed, as President Andrea Kiska signed the amendment to the Health Insurance Act, TARS learnt from the President’s Office on Thursday.

The amendment was approved by Parliament in a fast-tracked procedure on Wednesday (April 27) and Kiska signed it the same day.

The proposal, sponsored by Health Minister Tomas Drucker (Smer-SD nominee), will postpone the issuing of health policyholder cards with embedded electronic chips by a year from December 2016 to December 2017.
The same deadline extension is to be introduced for the mandatory creation and transferring of electronic health files to the electronic health records of people.

A recent re-evaluation of the eHealth strategy – and the flaws it turned up – are the reasons behind the move. “Based on recommendations established by the Supreme Audit Office (NKU), insufficient financing for the process of issuing policyholder cards and a lack of time regarding potential financing from EU structural funds calls for postponing the deadline for issuing out policyholder cards with chips as well as the mandatory creation and sending of electronic health files to electronic medical records,” explains the Health Ministry.

Drucker is postponing the deadlines despite the statement of his predecessor at the ministry – Viliam Cislak (Smer-SD nominee) – that the necessary applications and infrastructure for the eHealth project were completed.