Miklos Szocska

Education

Harvard Kennedy School.

Career

Before his term the average life expectancy for people in this position was 20 months. During his term he introduced an evidence based, consultative health policy. Besides managing to keep the sustainability of Hungarian health services during the world economic crisis, Hungary also introduced a broad range of serious health reforms.

The most important reform intervention was the implementation of a radical public health regulatory framework with popular support.

This included the full ban of smoking in public and workplaces, introduction of public health product tax on food and beverages with added sugar or salt and safety limitation of transport fat content of food. The money generated from public health product tax contributed to the salary raise of public employees of the health care sector, and considerably slowed down the international migration trends of Hungarian health labor force.

During the four years he introduced central capacity planning for rationalization and regionalization of the health care provision system and designed new efficient patient pathways, laying down the frameworks of a national health service. Other actions on transparency and efficiency helped Hungary to save expenditure on pharmaceuticals while the pharmaceutical expenditure of citizens also decreased.

During his term a broad range of Structural Fund developments were implemented in Hungary with strong focus on efficiency renewal of health facilities and also the introduction of a comprehensive national electronic health system.

He graduated from medicine in 1989 at Semmelweis University, has a master of public administration (Master of Public Administration) degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and also holds a Doctor of Philosophy. degree, for which the thesis topic was change management. At present he works as the director of the Health Services Management Training Centre at Semmelweis University, Budapest.

Achievements

• The introduction of central national procurement system for Hospitals achieved radical costs savings in the national health service.