Marcel Forai, former head of Slovakia's state-owned, and biggest health insurer, Všeobecná Zdravotná Poisťovňa (VšZP) (source: Sme)
The companies of Anna Sučková, Welix and SPV 40, were slated to end contracts with VšZP as of June 30, due to their shady background.
The state insurer argues, however, that health care and treatments of its insured clients cannot be sufficiently guaranteed in some branches. Thus, the contracts will prolonged until the end of this year, the TASR newswire wrote.
“The new management has considered all arguments,” VšZP spokeswoman Petra Balážová told TASR. “We received motions from clients, as well as from the Union of Help and Support for Health who feared that from July 1 on, the accessibility of some specialised doctors, especially in the Košice and Prešov regions, could deteriorate. These companies treated more than 40,000 VšZP clients in 2015 alone.”
Recently, Forai’s successor Miroslav Vaďura called these contracts moral and ethical failures of his predecessor. He added that he saw no reason to prolong these contracts, as “VšZP has sufficiently filled the public minimum network in these specialisations”. Balážová said, however, that the new management changed its original decision “with patients’ wellbeing in mind; there is nothing more to it”. Moreover, VšZP plans to review these contracts more in detail in upcoming weeks. The current management has been working only for five weeks which is too short for any detailed analysis.
The new management also decided not to continue cooperation with the Brilance company after June 30 – this has also been connected to Forai’s aunt Sučková, according to opposition. It failed to fulfil the basic condition of complex health care when diagnosing and managing patients with osteoporosis, VšzP informed TASR. It also has some flaws in medical documents.
Contracts with his aunt Anna Sučková cost Forai his position last September. He defended them as standard, but after much publicity, he resigned. Totally, MP Miroslav Beblavý pointed to seven companies in which Sučková was active and with which VšZP concluded contracts under Forai.
Some other contracts with companies connected with Sučková are valid until 2019, some have already expired, while still others must be prolonged due to the law, as they offer pharmaceutical services.
The contracts between VšZP and these companies were checked by the Health-Care Surveillance Authority which audited dozens of contracts. The audit discovered several failings, but it came to the conclusion that companies owned by Sučková were not preferred, the private JOJ TV informed. The file is now under review by the National Criminal Agency (NAKA), TASR wrote.
