There was an inspection at the general practitioners: despite the patient reception time, care was not provided in 39 percent of the clinics

Péter Takács Last year, the state secretary responsible for health created the “inspection supervision service”, whose task is to coordinate the inspections of the health authorities (the health insurance company, OKFŐ, and the former ÁNTSZ, the National Center for Public Health and Pharmaceuticals) and uncover errors in patient care, Népszava wrote.

In February-March of last year, around 569 general practitioner and primary care dental services were inspected in four counties – Baranya, Tolna, Vas and Győr-Moson-Sopron. The investigations mainly took place in districts where medical businesses had more than one registered location. After that, in March 2023, 11 additional providers providing general practitioner care were visited in the regions of Northern Hungary, Western Transdanubia and Southern Transdanubia.

According to the newspaper, the inspectors who arrived unexpectedly found several deficiencies: for example, in many cases there were no orders during the period reported to the authority, and in some cases there was no dispensary at the address included in the operating license.

Based on data received from the Ministry of the Interior, Népszava reported that during the first inspection, only a third of the primary care providers were found to have no deficiencies. However, it was not possible to fully correct the previously identified problems even during a subsequent follow-up inspection. In the re-examined approximately 1,452 sites operated by 401 general practitioner service providers, 12 percent of the clinics could still not be found, and at the time of the inspection, even though it was time to receive patients, 39 percent of them did not receive medical care. There was also a problem with the availability of doctors outside the doctor’s office, as a third of them proved to be unreachable by phone, the newspaper wrote.

It also happened that substitutes in vacant districts did not treat patients in the substituted practice, but in their own clinic, where the patients were transported by municipal minibuses. According to the response sent to our newspaper by the Ministry of the Interior, the inspection also found that three-quarters of the GP services only posted the appointment times in a clearly visible place. The inspectors of NEAK objected in several places that the skilled workers registered for the full eight-hour working time were only at their workplace for four hours of the order time.

As a result of the inspection, the operating license of the non-working locations was revoked. On the basis of experience, the ministry considers further inspections of general practitioners to be justified, and they will even be extended to general practitioners’ on-calls as well.

We previously wrote that the shortage of general practitioners in Hungary continued to grow: according to data from the beginning of August last year, there are 659 unfilled general practitioner practices that have been vacant for longer than six months. This means 27 more empty practices than there were in June. In total, there are basic supply problems in 517 settlements or districts. Since there are a total of 6,500 practices, every tenth one is vacant.