Improving Quality and Efficiency of Health Services Program for Results

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The development objective of the Improving Quality and Efficiency of Health Services Project for Croatia is to improve the quality of health care and efficiency of health services in Croatia. The Government's reform program defines the following eight main priorities: (i) developing a health information system and eHealth; (ii) strengthening and better using human resources in health care; (iii) strengthening management capacity in health care; (iv) reorganizing the structure and activities of health care institutions including: implementing hospital master plan, implementing hospital reforms, governance and management changes, promoting group practices for primary healthcare doctors, expanding secondary-level outpatient services, including high-resolution outpatient centers, redefining long-term health care services, and palliative care; (v) fostering quality in health care; (vi) strengthening preventive activities including: implementing of a hospital accreditation, implementing of health technology assessment (HTA) to selected new health technologies, building a body of clinical protocols and care pathways, detecting and proper recording of specific "sentinel events for quality", implementing technical audits, and payment mechanism to incentivize the use of clinical guidelines, using of the existing e-prescription system for quality control purposes; (vii) preserving financial stability of health care including: further development of central procurement, rationalization of nonmedical services, strengthening the performance-linked component in payments to hospitals and outpatient services, developing the Ministry of Health (MoH) capacity to develop and present proposals to be financed by European Union (EU) structural funds; and (viii) improving cooperation with other sectors and society in general.