Estonia, Finland to help Slovenia with health reform

The Health Ministry hosted a meeting with Estonia's Health Insurance Fund representatives to discuss best practices in Estonian healthcare.

The focus was on health insurance and healthcare management as well as on the related legislative and systemic solutions.

Bešič Loredan told the press that the Estonians had outlined the way in which they had set up a modern health insurer which is fully digitalised and transparent.

He said that one of the main advantages of Estonia's health insurance system was that it fully controlled not only the payment and provision of healthcare services but also their quality, while the information on the flow of financial resources was public and transparent.

"It's been agreed that they will help us with our reform, we'll be working with both Estonians and Finns," the minister said.

If we accept the offered help, cooperate and talk, a large share of the necessary changes could be included in the planned reform, he added, pointing to digitalisation.

We won't copy their entire system, because when it comes to expertise and the network of health organisations, we are a few steps ahead of Estonia, Bešič Loredan said.

Digitalisation was also singled out as an advantage by Rain Laane, chairman of the management board of the Estonian Health Insurance Fund.

The Estonian system records the work of doctors in the public and private systems and shows whether they have exceeded the recommended daily limit of 12 hours.

Laane meanwhile sees Slovenia's allocating a larger share of its GDP for healthcare than Estonia as an advantage of Slovenia's healthcare system.