Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic / National Health Information Center

Department of Population Living Standards Statistics / Program management department

Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, Department of Population Living Standards Statistics, Lamačská cesta 3/C, 840 05 Bratislava 45, Slovak Republic

National Health information Center, Lazaretská 26, 811 09 Bratislava 1

Statistics on healthcare non-expenditure provide information on healthcare human resources, healthcare facilities, and healthcare utilisation.

- The people active in the healthcare sector (doctors, dentists, nurses, etc.) and their status (graduates, practising, migration of doctors and nurses, etc.);

- The available healthcare technical resources and facilities (hospital beds, beds in residential care facilities, medical technology, etc.);

- The health activities or patient contacts undertaken (hospital discharges, surgical procedures, ambulatory care data, etc.).

Annual national and regional data are provided in absolute numbers or as a rate of a relevant population.

Data are based mainly on administrative records (see section 18.1 ‘Source data’ for more information).

For the collection data on healthcare non- expenditure, the classifications used in the System of Health Accounts (SHA) and its related set of International Classification for the Health Accounts (https://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/1841456.pdf ) are applied.

For hospital discharges, the International Shortlist for Hospital Morbidity Tabulation (ISHMT) is used. (https://circabc.europa.eu/ui/group/c1b49c83-24a7-4ff2-951c-621ac0a89fd8/library/6ff71dd5-8200-4fe4-a610-a7707cd47c4d )

For Health Employment, the Directive 2005/36/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 September 2005 on the recognition of professional qualifications apply (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2005/36/2020-04-24 ).

Definitions of mandatory variables are laid down in Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/2294.

Where possible, the statistics are separated by sex (male/female), age group and NUTS2 region.

The Eurostat manual on healthcare non-expenditure statistics provides an overview of the classifications, both for mandatory variables and variables provided on voluntary basis.

National deviations: see Annex at the bottom of the page.

Public health.

The healthcare non-expenditure statistics describe the public health sector from a non-monetary perspective. The statistics explain the number or rate of different healthcare resources, facilities and utilisations. A wide range of indicators are collected from a multitude of sources and therefore, details pertaining to individual variables are given in the Annex.

Definitions of mandatory variables are laid down in Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/2294.

The Eurostat manual on healthcare non-expenditure statistics provides an overview of the classifications, both for mandatory variables and variables provided on voluntary basis.

National changes of statistical concepts and national definitions deviating from Regulation (EU) 2022/2294: see Annex at the bottom of the page.

Registered health professionals or health care facility categories.

(1) all health care staff

(2) all available beds or equipment in hospitals or in nursing and residential care facilities

(3) all discharges or procedures performed in all hospitals

Complete national territory

Each variable has a different time period of data coverage. In the part of Health Employment the time period starts at the interval of reference year (1980-2009), Physical resources (1980-2004), Health activities (1990-2018), Eurostat module (1996-2012).

Not applicable

Absolute numbers at end of reference period/average number during reference period. 

Rate of phenomenon per reference population (e.g. per 100 000 inhabitants).

Calendar year.

Regulation on Community statistics on public health and health and safety at work (EC) No 1338/2008 

Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/2294 on statistics on healthcare facilities, healthcare human resources and healthcare utilisation 

Gentlemen’s agreement

- Act no. 540/2001 Coll. on State Statistics as amended by later regulations by means of Statistical Office Regulation No.250/2017 Coll. on which basis State Statistical Surveys Programme was published for the years 2018-2020

- Act no. 153/2013 Coll. on the National Health Information System and on Amendments and Additions to Certain Laws

- Decree of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic no. 10/2014 Coll. on Laying Down List of Statistical Reports in Health System, and Details of Procedure, Methods, Designated Reporting Units and Reporting Deadlines within the Statistical Survey in the Health System and Their Characteristics

- Decree of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic no. 44/2014 Coll. on Laying Down Details of Procedure, Methods, Designated Reporting Units and Reporting Deadlines for Identifying Events Characterizing Health Status of the Population and Their Characteristics

- Decree of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic no. 74/2014 Coll. on Laying Down List of Reports into National Health Registries, Their Characteristics, Details of the Content of National Health Registers, Procedure, Methods, Range of Reporting Units and Reporting Deadlines to National Health Registries

Joint Questionnaire on Non-Monetary Health Care Statistics, which is carried by Eurostat, OECD and WHO-Europe.

At the National Health Information Center level, confidentiality policy fits general statistical rules as stipulated by legislation and used also by other members of the National Statistical System.

At the National Health Information Center level, confidentiality of data is kept in outputs for external clients, using mostly gross granularity of data provided, from the regional point of view, so identity of reporting unit stays uncovered.

Data produced by the National Health Information Center are released regularly according to the release calendar.

http://www.nczisk.sk/Statisticke_vystupy/Program_publikovania/Pages/default.aspx

Aggregated data are publicly available in form of publications on website of the National Health Information Center, http://www.nczisk.sk/Statisticke_vystupy/Tematicke_statisticke_vystupy/Pages/default.aspx. Data is provided to users individually as well, upon request, free of charge, depending on comprehensiveness of given request, with respect to actual staff capacity and their workload, or, in specific cases it is possible to ask for data according to the Act No. 211/2000 Coll. on Free Access to Information and on the Amendments of Certain Acts (The Freedom of Information Act) as amended by later regulations, https://www.slov-lex.sk/pravne-predpisy/SK/ZZ/2000/211/20211101.

Any data release follows rules on personal and confidential data protection.

Annual

Occassionally, data output are communicated on the National Health Information Center level once regular pre-programmed outputs are ready to be published. Information is presented towards experts or general public, in a form of press conference or in a press report.

Data are regularly published on the website of the National Health Information Center: Health Statistics Yearbook (https://www.nczisk.sk/Statisticke_vystupy/Zdravotnicka_rocenka/Pages/default.aspx), topical statistical outputs (https://www.nczisk.sk/Statisticke_vystupy/Tematicke_statisticke_vystupy/Pages/default.aspx).

Interactive Excel data tables are available publicly on web site; on-line database is not available.

Upon request, assessed individually, especially for expert/research purposes.

None

Annually updated guidelines and a form templates at https://www.nczisk.sk/Statisticke-zistovania/Pages/default.aspx and https://www.nczisk.sk/Registre/Stranky/default.aspx.

Quality documentation has not been produced yet on a systematic base.

National Health Information Center has prepared an internal directive that establishes a summary of regulations, activities and rules for ensuring the implementation of the value-creating process of producing statistical outputs from the processing of health statistical data in the National Health Information Center.

By adoption of the European Statistics Code of Practice Member States are obliged to provide high quality statistics based on definition of quality statistics of the European Statistical System. Quality is oriented to all important areas - from institutional environment, through the statistical production processes up to the output of official European statistics. Also release and provision of statistical information have to comply with the criteria of the European Statistics Code of Practice, mainly timelines, accuracy, reliability, relevance, clarity, impartiality, objectivity, professional independence, effectivity of using resources.

At national level there is an effort to work continuously on quality improvements of health care non-expenditure statistics.

Main users of the health data of the Slovak Republic (except Eurostat and international organisations as WHO and OECD) are: Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic, main experts of the Ministry of Health, other national institutions within the field of health, other ministries, Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, Social Insurance Agency, scientific institutions, universities, public.

The user satisfaction questionnaire is carried out on an irregular basis.

Data for mandatory variables with the first reference year 2023 (according to the Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/2294) are not fully completed (e.g. Health employment: practicing physicians) and similarly the Questionnaire on Health Workforce Migration is not fully completed.

As about coverage, data collection is designed as exhaustive and response rate is high.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

National data are available about 4 to 6 months after the end of reference year. Final data are published within app. 12 months after the reference year.

Data are published on time in compliance with the release calendar.

In the data, there is no problem of comparability between geographical areas in the Slovak Republic.

Data are comparable over time and break in series are described in the Annex at the bottom of the page.

If the National Health Information Center has information about related domains containing related data then the National Health Information Center will analyze the subject and evaluate it according to the circumstances.

Data are consistent. No consistency issues have been detected as yet.

9 724 EUR - direct costs, 3 890 EUR - indirect costs (costs are from 2020, there is currently no cost/burden analysis available for HCNE/JQ data at national level)

Changes processes as part of the revision are at the National Health Information Center partially described in the internal operating regulations and directive.

The published data is considered definitive after the completion of processing of the cleaned data. Changes made in connection with the revision are indicated by a corresponding note on the revised outputs.

Source data for the different variables are given in the Annex at the bottom of the page.

Annual.

Data is collected primarily electronically through a web application with built-in control mechanisms for data entry.

https://www.nczisk.sk/Statisticke-zistovania/Pages/default.aspx 

Data validation is continuously performed during the entire process of data collection and data processing based on defined procedures in accordance with the European Statistics Code of Practice.

As the data comes from exhaustive statistical surveys, health status reports and registries, none of the procedures as imputations, weighting, calibration and non-response adjustments were applied.

The data are adjusted after the final processing only due to a retroactively detected error significantly affecting the statistical outputs.

None