site.btaSt. Anna Hospital in Varna Requests Financial Assistance from Municipal Budget

The management of St. Anna Hospital in Varna Wednesday sent a letter to Varna Municipal Council Z\Chair Hristo Dimitrov requesting an urgent allocation of EUR 300,000 in financial assistance for the medical institution, the Municipal Council said on its website. It will be considered at a meeting of the Finance and Budget Committee scheduled for February 20.

In the letter, St. Anna Hospital Director Dr. Krasimir Petrov stressed retaining staff has become a huge challenge because of late payments from the Health Ministry and the National Health Insurance Fund, adding that the hospital is experiencing financial difficulties for reasons beyond the control of its management. He stated that the allocation of financial assistance of EUR 300,000 from the municipal budget will allow the hospital to pay off the most pressing overdue debts.

In January, employees at the hospital held a protest as they had only received their basic salaries, but not the additional remuneration they had earned. People held up posters expressing their dissatisfaction that while they were saving lives, they could not pay their own bills normally. Petrov stressed that the money received from the Health Ministry in January was not enough to pay the additional remuneration, adding that the big problem is that hospitals like St. Anna are generally underfunded.

The solution to get out of this situation is to increase the subsidy from the Health Ministry, the hospital director pointed out. He specified that he had sent letters many times and raised the issue with the authorities, but so far there has been no reaction. "If the Ministry of Health wants us to maintain the same volume of activity, it must necessarily change the amount of the subsidy, because otherwise we will be forced to start making cuts," Petrov stated, adding that the state must solve this problem, because from now on similar problems will arise in other hospitals as well.