European Recovery and Resilience Funds – Together towards the goal: more accessible emergency medical assistance
SLOVENIA, August 20 - Slovenia provides round-the-clock emergency medical assistance comprising the provision of emergency medical services in the event of when failure to provide them could lead to irreversible and severe damage to a person's health or death, as well as emergency transportation and the supply of emergency medication. Emergency medical assistance is organised as outpatient services in the form of Satellite Emergency Centre, on-call stations and on-site mobile units and as an inpatient service under the Emergency Centre.
The State also supports the development and the strengthening of the system of emergency medical assistance with EU funds under the RRP.
In collaboration with municipalities, the Ministry of Health has invested EU post COVID-19 recovery funds in improving the medical assistance accessibility. The investment included the purchase of nontransporting EMS vehicles and the construction of a heliport.
The investment aims to improve access to and the quality of emergency medical assistance and reduce the time taken by the emergency medical unit to reach the scene.
A total of EUR 3.69 million from the Recovery and Resilience Facility has been allocated for the acquisition of nontransporting EMS vehicles and in the construction of a heliport in Kočevje.
Introducing nontransporting EMS vehicles represents an important upgrade of the emergency medical service as it enhances accessibility to emergency medical care and enables more efficient on-site medical intervention. The emergency doctor can therefore focus on the most critical cases, while the rest of the ERV crew treat the non-critical interventions. This enables improved resource usage, higher availability of emergency doctors and less unnecessary crew demand. For patients this would entail quicker access to and better quality proper on-site medical assistance as well as less unnecessary hospital transports, thereby contributing to safer and better outcomes.
The Ministry of Health had approved every municipality's public tender application for the supply of nontransporting EMS vehicles. The acquisition of a total of 42 nontransporting EMS vehicles was approved to be subsequently delivered to the medical health centres of the following 36 municipalities: Brežice, Črna na Koroškem, Črnomelj, Domžale, Grosuplje, Hrastnik, Idrija, Ilirska Bistrica, Izola, Jesenice, Kamnik, Kočevje, Koper, Kranj, Litija, Ljubljana, Maribor, Metlika, Murska Sobota, Krško, Nova Gorica, Novo mesto, Piran, Postojna, Ptuj, Radlje ob Dravi, Radovljica, Ravne na Koroškem, Sežana, Slovenj Gradec, Slovenska Bistrica, Škofja Loka, Šmarje pri Jelšah, Tolmin, Trbovlje and Žalec.
In an attempt to ensure better accessibility of medical assistance, the RRP has also provided for the construction of a heliport in Kočevje, thus establishing a network prioritising the outermost locations. The project's main goal is to ensure improved and faster access to emergency medical care in the Kočevje region. The heliport is situated alongside the Kočevje medical health centre, which is also a Satellite emergency centre. The project's implementation enables faster transportation of patients in life threatening situations as well as faster arrival of emergency medical services.
The investment objectives will be included in the final (seventh) request for payment of funds from the Facility, which Slovenia will submit to Brussels no later than the 30th of September 2026.
According to the information provided by the Ministry of Health for 2023, in Slovenia the arrival time of mobile units (from the very moment of receipt of the emergency call until the unit's arrival at the scene) was a little over 16 minutes and was reduced to under 15 minutes after the implementation of the rendez-vous system and measures for better medical care accessibility.
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