The President of the Municipal Committee of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) Kotor and member of the presidency, Ivan Ilić, said that the Government of Montenegro and the relevant Ministry of Health do not have a plan for the strategic development of health care and therefore hospital capacities.
"Recently, more and more people have been talking and writing about the need to build new hospitals or restore/preserve existing ones, which is good to involve the public as much as possible on this topic. Politicians get important votes and win power by running on the topic of building a hospital as a policy priority such as the case in Budva, or successful civil protests are organized in order to preserve the hospital, as is the case in Herceg Novi," says Ilić.
According to the SDP press release, he said that every now and then there is talk about the need to build a new so-called city hospital in Podgorica or the construction of a new hospital in Pljevlja.
And all this, as he points out, would be good if there was no serious planning policy behind it.
"The Government of Montenegro and the relevant Ministry of Health do not have a plan for the strategic development of health care and therefore hospital capacities. The old plan expired a long time ago and was a dead letter," says Ilić.
It is a fact, he says, that the existing hospital facilities are old, poorly maintained and out of step with modern hospital standards.
The last new hospital building, he says, was built five decades ago.
"Later investments in hospital facilities were sporadic, partial and often only cosmetic. The fact is that Montenegro now has too many hospital facilities in relation to the number of inhabitants. We have one clinical center, seven general hospitals and one private one attached to the public health system and three special hospitals. Most hospital capacities in general hospitals are poorly filled, around 60-65 percent. The same is true in the Clinical Center," says Ilić.
Hospital units where more beds are requested are rare, says Ilić.
Such a large number of general hospitals, he says, can only objectively be justified by poor road infrastructure.
He states that otherwise realistically, two to three general hospitals would be closed for the purpose of rationalization.
According to him, the problem is outdated medical equipment and the lack of a plan and funds for its regular renewal, and as he says, perhaps the biggest problem is the professional staff, especially with medical doctors, specialists and subspecialists.
"A large number of doctors will retire in the next few years because they were educated at a time when studying medicine was popular and when faculties enrolled a large number of students. Bad salary policy, bad working conditions and bad housing policy discourage young people from studying medicine and our country will very soon be in a serious shortage of healthcare workers," Ilić adds.
He says that in the hospital where he works, they don't remember when the last young doctor did his internship.
Increasingly, as he states, no one appears at the advertised specializations, not even at the Clinical Center, which is the most attractive institution for advancement in the profession.
"All this suggests that we must seriously ask ourselves where this is going. Who and where will treat us in the coming decades? We need a serious and professional planning strategy for the development of hospital capacities. It is not serious that the prime minister or the relevant minister visits cities and lightly makes promises about building new hospitals is like setting up a kiosk," says Ilić.
As he says, he has already written about the need to reorganize the hospital system in Boka Kotorska and Budva because he considers this region to be unique in many ways, including the need to organize a unique hospital health care.
"Yes, this region absolutely needs a new hospital, preferably in the area of the Kotor Industrial Zone where there is sufficient free space and infrastructure for it. The location of the new hospital in this location would be at the tri-border of Kotor, Budva and Tivat, near the route of the projected boulevard between Budva and Tivat in the area where a new town will certainly be built in the coming years," Ilić points out.
According to him, the hospital should have serious capacities, equipment and enough staff to have the status of a "safe hospital", i.e. to be able to provide high-quality care for the most urgent patients 24 hours a day.
The construction of a new hospital in this place with the pooling of staff and equipment from existing hospitals combined with a smart housing policy for staff would, he says, surely solve this burning problem for a long time.
"Not to mention the importance of such an institution for the development of tourism as a strategic economic branch," says Ilić.
He says that based on decades of professional and significant managerial experience, he thinks that this is the only correct way.
"Any other solutions such as the construction of a smaller city hospital as planned in Budva or the placement of new activities in the overcrowded and substandard hospital in Kotor or the revitalization of the completely staffed and equipped hospital in Meljine are failed projects in advance and wasted resources," concludes Ilić.
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