Today, representatives of the Ministry of Social Affairs and the City of Tallinn met to discuss the possibility of merging the hospitals in the city. This time, the legal and financial options that have been developed together were also reviewed.

According to Maarjo Mändmaa, Secretary General of the Ministry of Social Affairs, the investment needs required to provide high-quality healthcare for the residents of Northern Estonia were reviewed. “When developing the hospital network, we must plan investments well in advance. The first priority is to modernize the infrastructure for providing psychiatric services and to establish the Tallinn Joint Hospital,” said Mändmaa. “These are the most important investments for the state,” he added.

Tallinn Deputy Mayor Karl Sander Kase emphasized that it is important to have a shared understanding that the state and the city will jointly establish the hospital. “Tallinn's position is that to achieve the final result in the negotiations, agreements must be reached on all issues. This means that the precondition for the merger of the hospitals is also a financial plan and an investment guarantee from the state for the development of the hospital network in the capital city. During today's meeting, we agreed that the corresponding financial plan will be developed,” said Kase.

The development directions of the hospital network until 2040 envision that no hospitals in Estonia's current hospital network will be closed. However, in Tallinn, it is planned to merge the North Estonia Medical Centre, Tallinn Children's Hospital, East Tallinn Central Hospital, and West Tallinn Central Hospital into a strong competence center for Northern Estonia. This would improve the quality of services offered, optimize service delivery, harmonize management, procurement, and IT processes, and allow for resource savings, including more efficient use of the workforce.

The next meeting of the hospital network consolidation steering group will take place in November. In the meantime, work will continue on the legal solution for consolidation and the financial impact analysis.

The negotiating parties foresee that in the future, Tallinn will have two modern medical campuses, one in Lasnamäe and the other in Mustamäe. The updated vision and development directions of the hospital network until 2040 will be presented to the Government of the Republic for discussion by Minister of Health Riina Sikkut at the end of October.