Due liabilities by hospitals to drug wholesalers and hospital equipment and supplies providers currently amount to 3 billion kuna, while total liabilities at the end of August were 4.1 billion kuna, the Health Ministry said on Monday.

The government on Monday made a decision to make payments to state-owned hospitals, and make earmarked contributions to county-owned hospitals, to settle part of the debt to drug wholesalers and hospital equipment and supplies providers in the amount of 710 million kuna.

In accordance with an agreement between drug wholesalers, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health, the aim is to reduce all liabilities to acceptable maturity dates, the Ministry of Health said.

It recalled that the budget revision in June 2022 increased the limits for health institutions by 10%, so they on average had 100 million kuna more for work per month. With this autumn revision, our goal is to provide the system with additional funds for covering the costs of health care, which will gradually increase the financial sustainability of the system, the Ministry said.

It noted that its primary goal is that the health budget has enough funds on the revenue side to cover all expenditures by the due date. “We believe that through the reform measures, we will achieve that in the next period,” the Ministry said.