WHEN EVERYONE PULLS TOGETHER,

THE RESULT IS A FUNCTIONING HEALTHCARE

(media relations, online)

Health insurance companies have one goal in common – to have satisfied insured. And so they came together in order to jointly and coordinately solve fundamental issues related to health insurance and health policy, thus bringing better conditions and quality to Slovak hospitals and doctors’ offices.

WHAT WERE THE EXPECTATIONS?

Our cooperation with health insurance companies was started by the hospital stratification project led by the then Minister of Health, Andrea Kálavská. Even though the stratification did not receive political support, it opened the door for our further cooperation. A big challenge was finding a common line and tone of communication, especially in issues where the private and state sectors diverged.

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WHAT WAS DONE?

As the right hand of the executive director, we set up the association’s communication frameworks, helped prepare his participation in conferences and discussion sessions. We issued joint opinions and provided journalists with answers to their questions on fundamental issues where insurance companies were pulling for the same end.

We experienced a rather turbulent period in communication with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. White medicine was closing, the costs of anti-pandemic measures in clinics and hospitals were rising, the government approved the postponement of public health insurance payments. In a short period of time, a number of new situations arose from various areas, to which it was necessary to react quickly.

After the situation in the company calmed down, there was finally room to redesign the website and create new content that would bring clear and useful information not only for policyholders, but also for journalists.

HOW DID WE DO?

„Healthy change“ – stratification of hospitals

Just the initial press conference in July 2018, at which the Ministry of Health presented together with insurance companies the new hospital concept, yielded 70 native outputs in the relevant media.

We presented the details of the planned reform to journalists in April 2019, which we supported with a public opinion survey, both of the general public and professional public. In September, when the fate of the reform was to be decided and the professional debates began to slip into political ones, we pushed again with communication. Apparently, there was no one in Slovakia who has not heard about the stratification of hospitals at that time, which we consider a definite success.