The Hungarian healthcare system is on the edge of collapse?

Hungarian hospitals are under immense pressure because they have to treat more than eight thousand COVID-19 patients. Some institutions already have to rank their patients because not everybody can receive professional intensive care.

According to 444.hu, Tamás Svéd, an intensive therapist and the secretary of the Hungarian Medical Chamber, said that the Hungarian healthcare system is reaching the end of its capacity these days. Even though there are many beds and ventilators, there is not enough personnel to utilise them and help patients. Mr Svéd said that in the third wave, he works in the COVID-19 intensive care department and would like to go home at the end of the day with a healthy spirit, but that is becoming harder every day.

The intensive therapist added that, based on his information and experience, most hospitals maintained the 3 patient per nurse framework. However, there are institutions where this number already reached 6-8. That does not mean that he or she does not receive any help, but professionally, they can only provide

the needed care for the patients between life and death.

The higher this number is, the higher the chance of making mistakes becomes.

Mr Svéd said that the third wave affects younger people as well; many patients are in their 30s and 40s in the hospitals. Meanwhile, the number of older people is lower in the intensive care because many of them already received the vaccine or already got the infection before.

However, the third cause is that younger people need beds.

He does not have official data about that sad process but believes that it will become more and more frequent. That is a soft ranking system, the “hard” type would be if the government acknowledges that the number of infections exceeds the capacity of the hospitals. The intensive therapist said that the number of intensive beds can be increased only to a point because, in this branch of medical care, there is no such thing as partial attention since a ventilator could even harm a patient. Therefore, they require 24/7 attention.

Mr Svéd said that the government and those managing the healthcare system have to decide how they increase the intensive care capacity. However,

there is no concord even between them.

Professor Merkely says that the limit is 1,000 beds while officials in the government info say that they can extend the capacities up to 3,000.

The government says that everybody who needs it will receive a ventilator, but they do not add whether the patients will have a professional crew to provide care for them. Furthermore, the country’s leadership does not publish relevant data about the number of available beds or the number of patients needing intensive care.

About the new healthcare contract all employees in the branch had to sign, he said that they miss everybody who refused to do so. Based on the data,

5,500 doctors and nurses left the Hungarian healthcare system

which struggled hard from the lack of workforce even before.

Source: 444.hu