The Supervisory Board of the Health Insurance Board approved the 2015 budget

PRESS RELEASE
16.01.2015

In the today’s meeting, the Supervisory Board of the Health Insurance Board approved the year 2015 budget with a total volume of 952.7 million euro. The increase compared to last year's budget is 5.1%.

The largest share of the health service budget of the Health Insurance Fund amounts to funding of specialist medical care services, for which for this year have been planned 549 million euro. The specialized medical care budget increase compared to last year is nearly 26 million (5%). The growth has mainly been influenced by the salary increases of the medical professionals supported by the Supervisory Board and the modernization of the list of the health care services, plus the addition of new services and activities related to ensuring access to health services. The share of the salary increase of health care professionals in the prices of services is 27 million euro.

This year, the primary health care funding increases to nearly 8%, amounting to 92 million euro. The main reasons for growth for primary health care arises due to the new so-called therapeutic fund being added in the year 2015, to the change in the system of additional quality remuneration of family doctors, increases in implementation of the service of a second family nurse and growth of the limit of the examination fund by 5%.

 The Health Insurance Fund considers it essential to support the growing significance of nursing care activities, and this is reflected in the continuing faster growth of nursing care in comparison to other types of health care services. The planned financial volume for nursing care for the year 2015 is 27 million euro, which is 13% higher compared to what was planned for the year 2014.

The planned dental budget for the year 2015 is 22.6 million euro, which is higher by 6% compared to the year 2014 budget. The dental care budget of the Health Insurance Fund includes the dental care and dental disease prevention costs of under 19-year-old children and youth mostly. The priority is the use of children's dental disease prevention and health services according to the need and the increase in the coverage of all age groups in all counties.

The year 2015 budget provides for 111.6 million euro for compensation of discount drugs, which is 1.6 million more than in the year 2014 budget. The planned budget for compensation of medical devices is 9.4 million euro, which is 4% more than last year.

For this year has been planned 102.6 million euro for payment of benefits for temporary incapacity for work, which is 6% higher than the budget of the year 2014. The increase in the budget is mainly due to the rise in the average daily wage.

In addition, the Estonian Health Insurance Fund finances the treatment of insured people abroad, pays a number of cash benefits including dental care and denture compensations and additional drug compensation. The budget can be found at the budgets page.