The Hungarian private healthcare system is about to change gear as we have foreseen: private service providers are the winners of the post-pandemic world. The limited capacity of public healthcare and the continuous increase of households’ income generate significant interest in private healthcare services. In the last months, private companies have reached a new level; they began to fill and expand their inpatient capacities at a spectacular pace. Meanwhile, national networks are being built, and consolidation is occurring in the market. Despite that, we can say that Hungarian healthcare is in a transitional phase. Although the palette of private service providers is broadening, it is not complete (and cannot be due to regulation), while the possibilities of public healthcare are not fully comprehensive either. The questions arise: how long can this transitory phase last, why is this situation not ideal from the patients’ point of view, and what can jolt the system out of this temporary phase? Will public healthcare recover with the new government’s plans? Is private care growing to such an extent that it becomes unavoidable for the state as well? Is better cooperation about to begin between private healthcare and the regulatory authority? Can financing follow this perhaps in the form of complimentary insurance? Or will private healthcare insurances simply increase organically? Naturally, we will talk about digitalisation, telemedicine, patient paths, human resource solutions, price increases, that is, the prospects of the whole sector.
