The National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) is dissatisfied with the work with “Information Services” JSC. It has been servicing the cash register systems since December 2019, when a contract was signed between them, but the obligations were not fulfilled on time and with quality. This is what Director of the National Health Insurance Fund, Prof. Petko Salchev, claimed:
„With every additional action they charge us prices that are not explainable to the cashier. Because at the moment when we want something to be upgraded, according to the requirements of the contract, they have to say how many people, who these people are, what positions they perform, what is their hourly rate. So many people come to us for such a sum. Besides, you saw how many letters were sent.„
The comment was made on May 4, during one of the meetings of the Supervisory Board of the National Health Insurance Fund. During the meeting Boyan Boychev made a proposal to terminate the contract and gave an example of the situation in „Bulgarian Posts“, where after a 6-hour delay the management was changed „immediately„.
Boychev recalled the situation with the inconvenience caused by the suspension of „Information Services“ on April 7. Then the situation was as follows, the representative of the Supervisory Board specified: „the contractor was notified on April 7, and until April 18 he did not provide the required information. The contractor also announced that the work was resumed on April 18, and in fact, only part of the work was resumed on April 21.“
However, Prof. Salchev disagreed with the proposal to terminate relations between the two parties. He explained that the contract expires at the end of 2022 and it is unlikely that there will be a company capable in such a short time to get involved and do the job.
Prof. Petko Salchev is very concerned especially by the fact that “we still do not have the protocols for electronic prescriptions, the electronic 7 prescription book is still not working in full, because there are no protocols, there are still unclear things about the controls, still information is still given beyond what the fund should provide as information.“
The supervisors insist that a joint meeting be held between the National Health Insurance Fund, “Information Services”, Minister of Health Prof. Assena Serbezova and Minister of Electronic Government Bozhidar Bozhanov. The idea is „to be able to discuss these issues at the appropriate level„, suggested Vasil Pandov. For his part, Boyan Boychev stressed the seriousness of the case, as „this is extremely worrying, because here we are talking about personal data. At the moment, there is no assurance that the IPR is working.„
The meeting ended with an agreement to hold the discussion on May 18 and to send letters from Assoc. Prof. Pandov to the participants.
