Pharmacies are afraid of bankruptcy. Insurance companies cut off their bonuses

“It is already clear that some pharmacies will disappear without financial contributions that compensate them for the lower remuneration for the care provided,” said the president of the Czech Chamber of Pharmacy, Aleš Krebs.

“This will have serious consequences for patients, for whom the availability of care may be significantly reduced,” he pointed out.

According to Krebs, there are about 500 pharmacies that are the only ones in the village, not all of them can afford bonus payments even at present. Operators of medicine dispensaries in Osečná in Liberecka or in Dolní Dobrouč in Orlickousteck, for example, are afraid of extinction due to a loss of income.

This year, the insurance company paid the bonus for ensuring availability to 117 pharmacies, starting next year there will be four dozen fewer, and the number of areas to which the bonus for ensuring availability will apply will also decrease.

The president of ČLnK considers this to be non-compliance with the agreement that pharmacists concluded with insurance companies on payments for care in the next year. In addition, they did not know about the upcoming change.

One pharmacy receives about 30,000 crowns per month from a special fund of health insurance companies.

“The decrease in the number of areas where the bonus can be drawn is due to the update of the software used to evaluate availability. This is the official GIS software, which is used as a standard to analyze data in many fields,” explained the spokeswoman of the General Health Insurance Company (VZP) Viktorie Plívová. According to her, nothing has changed about the total amount that insurance companies distribute among pharmacies.

According to the insurance company, almost half of the pharmacies that fall into the currently subsidized areas did not apply for the bonus. “If they did so, even more pharmacies could draw the bonus in 2025 than this year,” she added.

A bonus can be given to a pharmacy that is the only one in the village with a general practitioner, is more than 10 minutes away from another pharmacy, is open at least 25 hours a week and invoices insurance companies less than six million crowns per year. There are 2,700 pharmacies in the Czech Republic.