211 000 Bulgarian nationals, or 3% of the population, have no access to emergency medical service because they live in remote areas, according to a report of the National Audit Office (NAO) on the quality of medical care in the country.

The report, which is to be officially presented on Monday, spans the period 2010-2014, according to NAO Chair Tsvetan Tsvetkov, as cited by the Bulgarian National Radio.

The report states that emergency medical service in Bulgaria is neither efficient nor effective.

According to the authors of the report, 15% of Bulgaria’s population may have to wait for over 30 minutes to access urgent medical assistance, which on occasion could have lethal consequences.

58% of the localities in the country may access an emergency unit within 20 minutes.

In Tsvetkov’s words, the problems may be resolved and the quality of medical service may improve as a result of the implementation of a newly adopted concept paper on the development of emergency medical treatment in the period 2014-2020.

The measures listed in the concept paper include, among other proposals, grouping patients into three categories, depending on their condition, with the ones most in need of urgent medical care to be reachable within 7 minutes.

Bulgaria’s Health Ministry launched a EUR 85 M plan to upgrade the sector of emergency medical service in the summer, according to reports of investor.bg.