Osakidetza will pay ambulance companies according to delay time
Patient associations have been involved in the drafting of a new health transport contract worth EUR 650 million.
Osakidetza has introduced into its new health transport contracts the "outcome payment" system, which will be paid monthly according to the times of delay accumulated by patient transfer ambulances, as announced on Thursday by the Deputy Minister for Health Administration and Finance, Aritz Uriarte.
This payment system will be a novelty in the new contracts to be tendered by the Basque Government, worth 650 million euros, anamount that represents an "unprecedented investment" and will be distributed as follows: 373 million euros for urgent transport and 277 million for non-urgent transport, Uriarte explained.
These health transport agreements, supplemented by emergency ambulances, will enter into forceon 1 January 2027 and will last for four years , although they may be extended to three more years.
According to the vice-chancellor, for the first time patient associations have collaborated in the preparation of the documents, a commitment that derives from the Basque Health Pact, which has made it possible to make improvements to meet the real needs of users and to increase the quality and timeliness of service.
What criteria will be applied?
In this new mode of operation, a number of "routes" and a number of percentages of delays — acceptable, abusive and above excessive — that can be recorded by the patient transfer service will be established according to a scale.
These times will be different depending on the planned "routes" depending on whether theyare transplanted, vulnerable or severe patients.
So, the maximum time that can be considered acceptable is 60 minutes overall, and it goes down to 45 minutes for dialysis patients and 30 minutes for transplants.
Territorial distribution
The contracts tendered by the Basque Government will be divided into three territorial lots — Álava, Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia — to improve the organisation of the ambulance service.
In this context, the tender is based on a similar number of ambulances to the current one: in non-emergency health transport, about 160 ambulances in Bizkaia, 120 in Gipuzkoa and 30 in Álava; and in emergency health transport, 36 ambulances in Bizkaia, 24 in Gipuzkoa and 16 in Álava.
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