Over the past few years, officials in the Orb\u00e1n government have sought to present the Hungarian healthcare system in a positive light. For example, last year P\u00e9ter Tak\u00e1cs, the former State Secretary for Health, told the pro-government news outlet Index: \u201cHungarian healthcare is in better condition than people assume based on public discourse or what appears in the left-liberal press. This is my conviction, and the facts support it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In reality, however, the government was also aware that the situation was poor. They could have known this because, ten years ago, an inspection found that the overwhelming majority of hospitals had already failed to meet the conditions required for safe patient care.<\/p>\n
The report on the inspection was classified on the grounds that it had been prepared \u201cto support decision-making.”Despite repeated requests over the years, the authorities refused to release it. However, following the elections, the National Centre for Public Health and Pharmacy (NCPHP) provided us with the document.<\/p>\n
The inspection was carried out in 2015 by the predecessor of today’s NCPHP, the National Public Health and Medical Officer Service (NPHMOS).<\/p>\n
The inspectors examined whether hospitals complied with the legislation that defines the minimum requirements for healthcare services. The regulation specifies, for each medical speciality, the basic requirements that must be met to ensure safe patient care. These include medical equipment, hospital infrastructure, and the minimum number of healthcare professionals required.<\/p>\n
The 180-page inspection report obtained by Direkt36 revealed systemic problems in hospital care:<\/p>\n
According to a source who worked in healthcare administration at the time, the NPHMOS survey reached the decision-makers but was ultimately shelved. The reason was that they considered the minimum requirements established in 2003 excessively strict, and therefore did not take the report\u2019s devastating findings seriously. For political reasons, however, the minimum requirements have never been revised, and the report remained classified. Healthcare experts, on the other hand, say that these requirements are both achievable and necessary to ensure patient safety.<\/p>\n
The situation has only deteriorated further in recent years. Following the years of the COVID-19 pandemic, large numbers of healthcare professionals left the sector, the number of active hospital beds has continued to decline<\/a>, and hospital departments have been closing one after anothe<\/a>r.<\/p>\n Former State Secretary for Health P\u00e9ter Tak\u00e1cs sees the situation differently. Speaking to Direkt36 about the findings of the ten-year-old inspection, the politician said: \u201cIn 2015, we had not yet managed to put Hungarian healthcare back on its feet. It was an enormous task… Of course, we were not finished.\u201d<\/p>\n We sent detailed questions to the National Centre for Public Health and Pharmacy, the National Directorate General for Hospitals, which oversees Hungary’s hospitals, and the Ministry of Health, but none of them responded to Direkt36’s inquiries.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no active inpatient care provider in Hungary today who, in all the specialties it operates, is able to ensure both compliance with public health regulations and the minimum material and personnel requirements\u201d \u2013 reads the striking summary sentence in the document summarizing the 2015 nationwide survey. In other words, according to the investigation, not a single hospital fully complied with the legal regulation setting out the conditions for safe medical care.<\/p>\n The National Public Health and Medical Officer Service examined more than 1,700 departments of 100 inpatient care hospitals. The report prepared from this presented the main problems by specialty, but did not name specific hospitals.<\/p>\n Public health conditions \u2013 such as compliance with epidemiological rules and basic hygiene \u2013 were not fulfilled in 19 percent of the examined departments. The most frequent problem was the quality and cleanliness of healthcare textiles. This includes numerous textiles used in hospitals, from towels and bed linen to surgical drapes.<\/p>\n In nearly two dozen hospital departments \u2013 including maternity wards \u2013 the investigation also found that renovation would be necessary due to unclean, mouldy walls. In stroke care, life-saving medications were missing in several places.<\/p>\n Most often, the lack of public health conditions lies behind hospital infections. In recent years, we have dealt with the increasingly serious problem of hospital infections in a series of articles<\/a>, and we also made a documentary<\/a> about our investigation.<\/p>\n Not only hygiene was a problem, however; in many cases, material conditions were also not ensured in hospitals. This means the existence of equipment necessary for patient care.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no specialty where every provider has all the material conditions defined in the regulation,\u201d the investigation established.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The most common deficiency was the defibrillator; it was not available in 241 departments, which is 14 percent of all examined departments. This device can be life-saving, as it assists resuscitation. According to healthcare analyst Zsombor Kunetz, it is \u201cnonsense that there are no life-saving devices in departments where they would otherwise be needed.\u201d He added that in resuscitation, even minutes can matter, so it is not necessarily sufficient if a defibrillator is available on another department in the hospital.<\/p>\n According to the investigation, in most hospitals neither medical staffing nor nursing staffing requirements were fulfilled. \u201cIf those conditions are not in place, it is a serious problem\u201d\u2013 said healthcare manager Gabriella Lantos about the data.<\/p>\n Compared to the minimum staffing levels, 1,565 full-time specialist doctors were missing nationwide from the examined institutions, which represented a 20 percent shortage at the time. Moreover, since many doctors were already working part-time, in reality this number may have been even higher. Out of 53 specialties, only 10 had no doctor shortages; in the remaining 80 percent of specialties, staffing requirements were not met.<\/p>\n The most critical situation was in infant and child otolaryngology, where more than 75 percent of specialists were missing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In several child-care specialties the shortage was very high. In pediatric cardiology, for example, in two counties there was no specialist at all, while elsewhere only one doctor covered an entire county. In obstetrics, 40 percent of the prescribed minimum staffing was missing, and in surgery approximately every third doctor was missing.<\/p>\nCrumbling plaster, missing or expired equipment<\/h2>\n
By 2015, several thousand doctors and nurses were missing from the system<\/h2>\n