Latvian Health Minister proposes increasing hospital beds over new facilities

Latvian Health Minister Hosams Abu Meri has stated that Riga does not require the construction of new hospitals, but rather an increase in bed capacity within existing medical facilities. This position follows reports of occasional queues of emergency vehicles at the Pauls Stradiņš Clinical University Hospital.

Abu Meri noted that building new hospitals would exacerbate the current shortage of medical specialists. Instead, he proposed expanding bed availability in smaller, local hospitals to manage chronic patients. This strategy aims to relieve the burden on large university hospitals by allowing patients to recover in local facilities following major surgeries performed at university centers.

The minister suggested that this expansion could be achieved through the reallocation of existing funds from the National Health Service rather than requiring new budget allocations. By transferring patients to local hospitals, university hospitals would realize savings due to the lower per-bed costs at smaller institutions.