Minister Kujundzic said that this was the beginning of the process of the functional merger of Croatian hospitals aimed at raising the quality of services and patient safety as well as enabling a more rational management and reduced costs.
"With this, Osijek has taken on a greater obligation to assist other hospitals which will continue to operate as legal entities. This project means that patients from Nasice won't have to come to Osijek for specialist appointments but rather specialists will come to the Nasice hospital which will in turn secure sufficient beds for longer stays and palliative care," Kujundzic said.
The new model of functioning should reduce the number of on-call duties and should lead to reduced costs. "That won't be felt immediately but in the next two years when we will see that certain procedures are not being doubled," he added and announced that a similar agreement would be signed over the next few weeks with the hospitals between Karlovac and Ogulin, between Sibenik and Knin and between Vukovar and Vinkovci.