“We are very worried about the attitude of the management of the Klaipėda University Hospital that Palanga is just a small town, where the hospital’s admissions and emergency department can function practically “any way”, and the medical service package of the treatment facility is reduced to such a minimum that there is nowhere else to go,” he fears. Mayor of Palanga Š. Vaitkus.
After concluding a contract of use for more than 20 years, with the efforts of the Klaipėda Seamen’s Hospital and the Palanga Municipality, a small but efficient hospital providing the most necessary medical services to residents and vacationers with an ambulatory secondary level consultation department successfully operated in the resort.
In order to provide all the medical services necessary for Palanga, the Municipality also contributed financially. From the budget of Palanga municipality, the provision of round-the-clock first-level surgical emergency services, a pediatrician, and additional nursing services were financed.
In the last ten years alone, almost 110,000 functional beds were bought and transferred. euros. 2015 and 2016 an echoscope and an endoscope were purchased and handed over, almost 50,000 was allocated to them from the Municipal budget. euros. This year, Palanga Hospital for almost 90 thousand. An ambulance was bought for EUR.
“Since January 1, when the new reformed joint entity – Klaipėda University Hospital (KUL) started operating, we sat down with the leaders and representatives of KUL several times for negotiations regarding the activities of the Palanga branch of the Klaipėda University Hospital “Sailors’ Hospital” branch. The draft of the contract for the next ten years traveled back and forth through electronic channels like a tennis ball, but in very frequent cases – without taking into account the comments that are important to us”, says the mayor of Palanga.
After a short discussion, we managed to agree that Palanga Hospital will continue to provide secondary outpatient personal health care services: cardiologist, rehabilitation specialist, radiologist, ear, nose, throat doctor, echoscopist, endoscopist, ophthalmologist.
For the services of a traumatologist, neurologist, and endocrinologist, apparently, you will have to go to Klaipėda, but Palangi residents are promised to form a separate queue.
Internal medicine inpatient secondary level services are being eliminated, that is, the entire department is being closed, intensive care is no longer available either. Instead, KUL in Palanga sees a 10-bed internal medicine day hospital, where a patient with a referral from a family doctor will be able to come for procedures in the morning, but will have to go home in the evening. Consequently, these services will remain inaccessible to the elderly, those with difficulty walking or those who are immobile.
“The Klaipėda University Hospital’s obvious desire is to reorient almost the entire existing material base of the Palanga hospital building, which is owned by the Palanga municipality, only to inpatient palliative care and supportive treatment and nursing services,” Palanga Mayor Š. Vaitkus fears.
However, the biggest eye-opener is KUL’s intention to leave a reception-emergency department in Palanga, which will be more like a dispensary in a small settlement.
At first, KUL representatives even said that emergency services in Palanga would be provided only 12 hours a day, which means that in the evenings and at night, the resort would remain without doctors.
Now a new service delivery model is being implemented, when quality surgical emergency services will no longer be provided in the reception-emergency department of the Palanga hospital.
Despite ongoing negotiations on a new usage contract between Palanga City Municipality and KUL, surgeons currently working in KUL’s Palanga subdivision have already received notices of changes in working conditions following the institution’s reorganization. These reports indicate that their place of work is changing from Palanga to Klaipėda, so most of the surgeons have terminated their employment relationship since September 10, that is, not agreeing to the offer to work in Klaipėda.
In other words, the Palanga hospital no longer has doctors who can accept patients and provide them with surgical assistance when complex medical procedures are not required.
What does it mean for Palanga that the city – the largest resort in Lithuania – will be left without surgeons or a specialized emergency doctor in the emergency department?
In 2023, Palanga recorded a record 1 million. 300 thousand number of overnight stays in the resort, statistical data show that over the last ten years the number of overnight stays in Palanga has increased by almost 0.5 million.
The available data show that during the summer season, 40 to 60 patients visit Palanga’s admissions and emergency department every day and seek medical help. There was also a peak case when 75 patients were admitted per day.
Already this summer has shown that on long weekends, Palanga becomes almost the largest city in Lithuania in terms of the number and concentration of people here. As statistics show, in 2023 The number of inhabitants in the Vilnius municipality reached 592 thousand, and there were no less in Palanga during the peak days of long weekends, for example, on August 12-15 this year.
Let’s try to imagine what would happen if we left Vilnius without the reception of surgeons – in the emergency department? Meanwhile, KUL seriously teaches that Palanga has enough services corresponding to the qualifications of an internal medicine doctor, although about 50 percent of all applications are made by those who apply to Palanga’s emergency department for uncomplicated surgical procedures.
Current practice shows that Palanga has long since passed the limits of the summer season, and for several years in a row, the flow of tourists and guests has been received throughout the year. From September, the intensive conference tourism season begins in Palanga, at the end of September – the beginning of October, the Seniors’ Week will be held here, where thousands of seniors from all over Lithuania are expected to meet. An intense period awaits in December, when huge flows of guests gather here to celebrate the biggest holidays of the year, tens of thousands of guests are attracted by specialized events, such as the Stinto festival or concerts in the Palanga Concert Hall, which can accommodate over 2,000 spectators.
It should be noted that tens of thousands of the country’s residents have purchased second homes in Palanga, and they also live in Palanga for a shorter or longer period of time and not during the summer, although they do not declare their place of residence here.
If Palanga does not provide round-the-clock surgical emergency services, in every similar case, the institution will call an ambulance and the patient will be transported to Klaipėda, where the hospital already has heavy workloads. There will also be cases when an ambulance will bring a patient to the Palanga hospital only to have, for example, a blood test or an X-ray taken, and another, already the second GPM car, will take the patient to Klaipėda with that photo.
Such a situation is not only absurd, but also economically unprofitable.
“Has anyone calculated how much it will cost the state and taxpayers to bring such cars from the port city and transport those almost 4,000 or 5,000 patients to Klaipėda in three months?” Is there any transportation alternative provided, when a patient brought to Klaipėda from Palanga at night will be discharged from the hospital after the examination and will have to reach home or a place to stay in Palanga independently? Has it been calculated how many ambulances that will have to travel between Palanga and Klaipėda will not reach those people whose lives are in danger in time?
It is regrettable that KUL, which declares about modern and advanced treatment models adopted from abroad, has absolutely no idea what the specifics of Palanga are and that what is suitable for a small town in the province of Lithuania is not acceptable for a resort that generates millions of overnight stays.
We ask all institutions to pay attention to the situation, to listen to our arguments and to mediate in ensuring 24-hour surgical emergency services and/or the work of an emergency doctor in the Palanga hospital. per day”, states the letter sent to the Government, the Ministry of Health, the Seimas Committee on Health Affairs, the management of Klaipėda University and KUL.
2024-09-10 18:36:27