Length of Hospital Stay and Bed Occupancy Rates in Former Yugoslav Republics 1989–2015

Recent decades have been witnesses that developing world economies preceded global economic growth with all the consequences on healthcare systems of their countries. Complex and dynamic socioeconomic and technological evolution, primarily in free market of capitalist economies as well as in former socialist countries/economies with some postponement, provided significant advances and improvements in health outcomes (Jakovljevic and Ogura, 2016). Large differences in the quality of health systems are evident. Globalization among many changes led to the creation of so called emerging markets. The one with the most intensive development were marked by Goldman Sachs as BRICS European region offers great opportunities for studying variations in the magnitude of inequalities in health system quality because of the numerous intercountry varieties of political, cultural, economic, and epidemiologic nature (Arcaya et al., 2015). Eastern Europe and Balkans allow very good insight whether states with history of recent period of war, political instability, economic crisis, and different types of health care reforms have larger inequalities in health than countries elsewhere in Europe and worldwide (Mackenbach et al., 2008). We conducted a study within former Yugoslav republics, today independent countries and tried to identify some of the indicators determining these variations. A shortage of published data related to the consequences of SouthEastern European transition on healthcare is evident, especially regarding former Yugoslavia. The civil war events between 1989 and 1995 initiated a huge wave of socioeconomic changes in the whole region of the Balkans that inevitably influenced national health systems quality referring to health care provision, planning and financing. These reforms were significantly more prosperous in some states of former Yugoslavia compared to the others (Jakovljevic et al., 2015a). National health system of former Yugoslavia was actually something in between Western European and Eastern Soviet bloc financing pattern. Serbia is the largest Western Balkans medical equipment and pharmaceutical market in terms of population size as well as the value of sales among neighboring non-EU countries. Global recession caused serious problems in provision of sustainable financing and increased shortages of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment across the region of former Yugoslavia (Jakovljevic et al., 2015b). Health insurance systems are similar in all former Yugoslav republics. All employed citizens are insured and they use health care services in public health care institutions as well as in private institutions which have a signed contract with the Health Insurance Fund, a legal entity established by the Republic Ministry of Health. …