Doctors to be fined for charging illegal fees

Health Care Minister Tomáš Drucker wants to change the rules in the system of collecting fees from patients, wrote TASR on Monday. He does not intend to approve collecting fees for services which are fully covered by public health insurance. According to an amendment approved by the cabined on Monday, fines for doctor's surgeries which charge patients for booking appointments at a particular time could be as high as 16,596€. However, the change still needs to be approved by parliament. The Health Minister said that he was not against charging for additional services such as call centres, phone consultations, text notifications. The new amendment also deals with so-called patient management. The proposal also states that general practitioners should have a minimum of 30 opening hours per week. As TASR wrote, the finance group Penta, owner of the ProCare clinics, has recently voiced its disagreement with the proposed changes.