On Tuesday, the 12th of September, Latvia’s government supported the suggestion to allocate an additional amount of EUR 11.2 million towards laboratory examinations, as reported by the Ministry of Health.
The ministry’s representatives say that laboratories that perform examinations prescribed by physicians using funding from the state will soon receive additional funding to ensure they are able to continue providing state-funded services.
This additional funding will help cover this year’s operations, as well as slightly increase the contract volume for the remaining months.
At the same time, the ministry explains that laboratories that perform state-funded examinations still receive funding from the National Health Service every month.
However, this year there has been a significant increase of the number of patients in need of laboratory tests. As a result, laboratories have to perform more tests than was planned at the beginning of the year. To cover the costs of additional laboratory tests, the Ministry of Health requested additional funding.
The head of the Healthcare Department of the Ministry of Health Sanita Janka stresses that laboratory services are essential to the continue function of the healthcare sector.
“Funding was requested and it will be provided. Soon laboratories will be informed how much all of them will receive,” she said.
The National Health Service is authorised to cover additional costs that appear for laboratories in outside the planned annual budget. The service has contracts sighed with 39 accredited laboratories.
To avoid such a situation in a long-term perspective, the service will monitor the correlation between sent quotas and examination quotas related to them. In 2024 it is planned to introduce Digital Health Laboratory Test Management Module, which will allow analysing the flow of services and make data-driven decisions. The Ministry of Health has also started working with laboratories on reviewing payment conditions.
One suggested solution is considered the unified auctioning of state-funded laboratory services.
Data compiled by the Ministry of Health indicates that the need for laboratory examinations goes up every year. Use of compensated medicines is up as well, and patients using them require regular laboratory examinations. The number of different surgeries that require laboratory tests to be performed beforehand is up as well.
There number of chronic patients in Latvia in need of regular laboratory examinations is up as well.
Also read: E.Gulbis Laboratory considers ceasing state-financed tests entirely