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EU financial period 2021-2027 is approaching – Is Croatia ready for the negotiations and projects?

The beginning of Croatian negotiations for the EU financial period 2021-2027 is approaching. The new Cohesive policy puts emphasis on five policy objectives set as investment priorities. Forhealth care, the most important is “a more social Europe“, founded on the European Pillar of Social Rights. Due to the population ageing , increasing life expectancy and burden of non- communicable diseases, the enabling condition pertaining to health care priorities is a defined strategic policy framework for health and LTC. The fulfillment criteria include mapping of health and LTC needs, ensuring efficiency, sustainability, accessibility to services and measures to promote home and community based services. The aim of this research was to analyse capacities of the Croatian health care sector for LTC needs mapping and priority setting for the new EU financial supports. Desk research, as a suitable first tool in policy analysis, was conducted for assessing Croatia’s readiness for the upcoming negotiations concerning EU fulfillment criteria for the enabling condition for health. Three topics were in focus of the research: consistency of the terminology within the existing national strategic documents ; availability of population needs assessment data and appropriateness of the information about health system performance. Results. Current national strategic policy framework for health includes National Health Care Strategy 2012-2020, Strategic Plan for Human Resource Development in Health Care 2015-2020 and Strategic plan of Ministry of Health 2020-2022. Terminologically, LTC was not recognized as a distinct entity but some of the existing services suit LTC definition. For reporting state and trends of health and health care routinely collected dana were used. Structure and output indicators, referring to system performance and health outcomes were set. Process indicators were not set. Population needs, including LTC, were not shown. The connection between needs analysis and selected priorities was mostly unclear. Current national strategic framework for health is not in line with the new EU fulfillment criteria for health. Since the time frame of national strategic policy framework for health is near its end, there is an opportunity to make needed adjustments, namely mapping of health and LTC needs. Routine collection of population and health data which can serve as a basis for required health and LTC mapping is in place. Croatia being one of the countries taking part in the development of the methodology for the mapping as a part of EC Health Infrastructure Mapping project should be considered as an advantage.

health policy ; long-term care ; strategic planning ; desk research

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