Financing of specialist care will see improvement from January, as a decision was made on the 2011 financing of healthcare providers (in reference to the performance period between November 2010 and October 2011) based on a decree submitted by the Secretariat of State for Health of the Ministry of National Resources and approved by Government on 22 December 2010.

In order to make financing more just and in line with health policy objectives, the current health sector management considered several aspects when defining the funds of the so-called performance volume limit (PVL) for 2011. The distribution was based on the funds of the PVL of 2010, while the surplus was influenced by the following:

• Institutions with progressive and special tasks (universities, county hospitals, national institutes, specialist hospitals, church hospice) received surplus PVL from a separate fund.
• The number of one-day treatments reported last year influenced the rate of surplus PVL. *
• Correctional PVL increase for those providers who were unfavourably affected by the PVL changes that took place in 2007.

In line with the above just measures, the funds for this year should have been lowered for some institutions; however, this did not happen – in 2011, these providers will receive at least as much funding as they did in 2010, including the amount of PVL funds they received from the Ministerial funds.

Breaking with the strict rules of the PVL and the practice of previous years, the current Government Regulation allows for the providers to partially account for their excess performance. Outpatient specialist care institutions treating patients above the PVL funds allocated for 2011 will receive refund from the Hungarian National Health Insurance Fund – 30 percent refund up to 10 percent of surplus, 20 percent refund between 10-20 percent of surplus. In the field of in patient specialist care, the provider will be able to account for 30 percent of the base fee for up to 110 percent surplus treatment of patients above the limit.

The Hungarian National Health Insurance Fund notified the healthcare providers regarding the available PVL funds for 2011 and today published on its website the degree and methodology of PVL distribution in relation to each institution.