General Practitioners will be able to prescribe free prescriptions to patients with COVID-19, and hospitals will receive additional funding. These are the decisions taken today during a meeting of the Supervisory Board of the National Health Insurance Fund. This possibility is in force today, but the GPs will be ready from Monday, Deputy Minister of Health and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the National Health Insurance Fund Alexander Zlatanov told reporters. The decisions were voted unanimously, he added.

According to him, the prescriptions will be electronic. Such prescriptions can also be written in the already discovered covid areas.

Zlatanov reminded that the prescriptions are for free medicines and are for health insured patients.

An average of BGN 39 million per month will be distributed to the hospitals until the end of the year, where patients with COVID-19 are treated, said the manager of the National Health Insurance Fund, Prof. Petko Salchev. According to him, the only condition is that the hospitals have at least 10 percent of the occupied beds, determined by an order of the director of the regional health inspection.

Hospitals that do not treat COVID-19 will receive up to 85 percent of their budget, added Prof. Salchev. The National Health Insurance Fund envisages BGN 51 million, which will be used to pay for the "over-limit" activity performed by the hospitals in 2017 and 2018, he added.

In response to a question about his resignation requested by some medical colleges due to the non-transparent distribution of funds, Prof. Salchev said that it was not time to talk about resignations now.

Next month, the amounts provided for workers "on the first line" will be BGN 1,200, and the money will be for work in October, said Prof. Salchev. At the end of October, the funds for the employees of the "first line" are BGN 1,000 each and are for the work in September.

In the next 10-14 days there will be results from the imposed additional anti-epidemic measures, Zlatanov added. If the current measures do not lead to a good result, we will take more serious ones, he added.

/BTA