Long queues of people – mostly the elderly – waited to register with a new family doctor in front of the Health Centre in Slovenska Bistrica on Monday, after the previous concessionary family doctor left and another family doctor retired earlier. This left thousands of citizens without a personal physician. The new doctor filled the capacity in just a few hours. Many angry people stayed outside the gates, demanding accountability from those in charge.
Eyewitnesses told us that the queues started to form even before people started to leave for work at the nearby Impol company, with some potential patients even arriving in the middle of the night. Long queues were forming as early as 5 a.m. and then snaking down a good part of Partizanska Street. Among those waiting were those with seven and eight crosses on their backs – that is, those who need a doctor the most. The situation was reminiscent of the shortages of deep socialism.
But some waited in vain. At around 10 a.m., we saw on the Health Centre’s website that they were no longer accepting new registrations for personal physicians and paediatricians. Some people had simply been left behind again. This is the new reality of Slovenia under Golob.
However, on Tuesday, another day of this will follow. A popular gynaecologist has also left the Health Centre and has unofficially stated that he earns as much as he used to earn in Slovenia in a month, in a week in Austria, where he is relocating to. The gynaecologist in Slovenske Konjice has also left, so the queues will be even longer, as a large number of women have been left without a gynaecologist almost at once.
The pictures are reminiscent of 2022, when desperate Ljubljana residents were queuing to register with a personal physician. There, too, physicians were leaving the Health Centre Ljubljana – even for jobs abroad.
The Health Centre informed patients that on the 31st of May 2024, Alenka Antolinc Košat, MD, Specialist in Family Medicine, terminated her employment with the Health Centre. Patients were referred to the outpatient clinic for patients without a personal physician, saying: “Patients are informed about the termination of work of their chosen personal physician by the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia (ZZZS). Patients who are left without a personal physician within the scope of the 0.6 programme will be taken care of by two female doctors, who work alternately in the outpatient clinic and are available to the residents four days a week. The two doctors who still work as personal physicians have filled their available slots, so it is no longer possible to choose them as personal physicians. All those who do not have a personal physician of their choice can choose one among the doctors who are still accepting patients (neighbouring municipalities of Slovenske Konjice, Poljčane, Maribor). In the Slovenska Bistrica Health Centre, we have an outpatient clinic for patients without a personal physician, which is staffed by family medicine doctors from the Slovenska Bistrica Health Centre, and we therefore propose that all those who are still without a personal physician of their choice seek medical help in this outpatient clinic.”
Now, a new doctor has arrived, and of course, people didn’t want to be dependent on the outpatient clinics, so they did everything they could to register her as their personal physician. Chaos ensued.
Capacities filled almost immediately
The capacities of the new doctor, Marija Osovnikar, filled very quickly – registration was supposed to take place between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., but after just a few hours, all the available slots were filled. In principle, it was announced that enrolment would take place “all day between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., or until all 1,895 slots of the quotient are filled.” The lady who arrived at 4 a.m. got her turn at 7 a.m.; the others waited much longer. At one point, a fight almost broke out. People were furious, saying that they were paying and not getting any service in return. They called both the government and the management of the health facility to account.
The war on doctors is already showing results
The war on doctors is therefore bearing its first real consequences. Meanwhile, the Minister of Finance recently proudly proclaimed on RTV Slovenia that they have “entered deep into the healthcare reform.” But the reform proposed by the government is such that it will drive away even more doctors and lead to even more queues like the one described above, because it will implement a purely state-run healthcare service, and this will lead to a further flight of the most needed staff in the healthcare service. The only ones who will be left will be those who have nowhere else to go – usually those who are less capable. Under the Golob government, Slovenian healthcare is experiencing a cataclysm that will not be resolved for at least two more terms of ‘normal’ governments.
The leader of the opposition, Janez Janša, also commented on the situation, writing: “Queues just like the ones in socialism. Supposedly, the government is successfully implementing the health reform?”
What is happening in Slovenska Bistrica and what happened in Ljubljana some time ago is only a brief overture to the cataclysm that will happen if the Golob government implements a centrally-planned anti-reform of healthcare that will plunge the entire healthcare system into the ineffective clutches of state management. Doctors will leave, there will be no new doctors, health centres will be left without capacity, citizens will be left without personal physicians, and seriously ill patients will be left without specialists.
The demarcation of public and private
The Ministry of Health has prepared a proposal for an amendment to the Healthcare Act for public debate, which is aimed at regulating the public and private healthcare networks. Among other things, the proposal restricts work with private providers and encourages additional work in the healthcare facility where the healthcare worker is employed. The proposal will be open to public consultation until the 16th of October.
The amendment aims to artificially delimit public and private healthcare in such a way that private doctors will be completely excluded from the public system. What does this mean? Public healthcare authorities must take into account, when demarcating public service and commercial activities, that commercial activities are only complementary to the public health service. A public institution will only be able to provide services from the market outside surgery hours, which will effectively exclude all private outpatient work from the public system, and the public system will become a purely state-run system.
So, an activity where there is a severe shortage of doctors would be regulated by the Golob government in a way that restricts it even more, while at the same time, they refuse to increase the salaries of doctors in the public system outside the closed bureaucratic system of the single pay system. Slovenska Bistrica is only the beginning.
I. K.
