Stricter financial regulation for Slovak health insurers

2010-09-01

The Slovak Health Ministry is planning to tighten the solvency regulations for health insurance companies effective from 1 January 2011. The ministry proposes two additional indicators how to evaluate their financial health.
The first indicator, short-term accounts receivable to accounts payable ratio should disclose any disparity between the liabilities towards the healthcare providers and insurers’ ability to finance them. The second ratio, own capital to premiums collected after redistribution, will enable to monitor sufficient capital resources of insurers.
The insurers will also have a duty to publish all the contracts entered into with healthcare providers on their website and provide them to the Slovak Health Care Surveillance Authority (UDZS). This will enable control of public resources and to uncover any preferential or non-preferential treatment of specific providers, groups of providers or regions.
The insurance companies will also be required to change their accounting practices in order to report total costs and expenditures, as well as financial results, separately for specific insurance types, i.e. public health insurance or personal health insurance.
The Ministry decided to introduce new stricter regulations after the closure of European Health Insurance Company and due to ongoing financial crisis.