Mothers and experts ranked best maternity hospitals in Slovakia

Koch Gynaecology and Obstetrics Hospital and Faculty Hospital Trenčín ranked among the best.

Koch Obstetrics Hospital, BratislavaKoch Obstetrics Hospital, Bratislava (Source: TASR)

Koch Gynaecology and Obstetrics Hospital (GPN) tops the 2018 ranking of the best maternity clinics compiled by the Health Policy Institute (HPI), the SITA newswire wrote on July 19.

Koch was followed by the Hospital with Polyclinic Spišská Nová Ves, the Faculty Hospital in Trenčín, and the University Hospital in Martin. In the overall assessment, they achieved the highest scores in their categories within the scope of neonatal care.

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Experts vs. mothers

The assessment involving 53 hospitals consisted of two categories: the assessment of mothers-to-be and mothers who have recently given birth, and an expert evaluation.

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Since last August until May 2, 944 mothers-to-be and mothers who recently gave birth evaluated Slovak maternity wards, SITA reported.

University Hospital Martin topped the mothers’ ranking, while NsP Spišská Nová Ves was second and GPN Koch came in third.

Women were most satisfied with the professional expertise of the medical staff (90.63 percent), the possibility of a close person accompanying them at birth (88.8 percent) and with the equipment of the maternity ward (88.7 percent), the HPI report says, as quoted by the TASR newswire.

On the opposite end of the evaluation was dissatisfaction with the first physical connection with the baby in the first two hours after birth (53.67 percent), the quality of pre-labour preparation (75.9 percent) and support for breast-feeding (77.1 percent).

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Experts rank the Faculty Hospital Trenčín as the best maternity hospital , followed by the University Hospital Martin and the University Hospital Antolská in Bratislava.

Maternity hospitals to be closed down

Even though the number of births increased by nearly 450 last year compared with the previous year, there are hospitals where less than 300 children were born in 2017, the Denník N daily wrote on the same day, adding that the statistics indicate that more than 57,000 children were born last year, making it 1,084 births a year per hospital on average.

The state now considers introducing a limit of at least 360 births a year to keep a maternity hospital, while abroad it is 500 births a year. This would mean that the maternity hospitals in the towns of Revúca (298), Snina (334) and Svidník (352) would have to close if they fail to attract more women to use their services.

On the other hand, hospitals with the largest number of births are in Bratislava: Petržalka (3,361), Ružinov (2,800) and Kramáre (2,200). They are followed by maternity hospitals in Trenčín (more than 2,000) and Košice-Šaca (1,900), Denník N wrote.

HPI and the Rodinka.sk website organised a quality assessment of Slovak maternity wards for the seventh time through the Guide of Maternity Hospitals project (an internet application), according to SITA.

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