OBJECTIVES: The aim of our study was to analyse the performance indicators of cardiac rehabilitation in Hungary.

METHODS: Data were derived from the financial database of the National Health Insurance Fund Management, the single health care financing agency in Hungary. We analysed the period between 2014-2017. We analysed the access to care in counties by the number of hospital beds per population and the utilization of care by calculating the proportion of acute cardiac patients underwent further cardiac rehabilitation. Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for rehabilitation hospital beds and rehabilitation rate.

RESULTS: Between 2014-2017 the annual number of patients underwent cardiac rehabilitation varied between 24,834 (2015) and 26,146 (2014) without significant changes. Total number of hospital beds for cardiac rehabilitation was 1765 or 1.8 beds/10,000 population and did not changed during the period under investigation. There were significant regional differences in the number of hospital beds per 10,000 population: counties with the highest number of hospital beds were Veszprém (11.47), Győr-Moson-Sopron (4.94) and Budapest (2.27); while counties with the lowest number of beds were Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg (0.27), Heves (0.0) and Vas (0.0). The proportion of patients underwent acute cardiologic care and got subsequent cardiac rehabilitation varied between 27.9 % in 2015 and 29.1 % in 2014 with significant regional differences. In 2017 counties with the highest subsequent cardiac rehabilitation rate were Veszprém (46.8 %), Győr-Moson-Sopron (39.5 %) and Komárom-Esztergom (38.3 %), while we found the lowest rehabilitation rate in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg (14.2 %), Hajdú-Bihar (16.7 %) and Csongrád (19.6 %). Pearson correlation was 0.742 between rehabilitation beds and rehabilitation rate.

CONCLUSIONS: The access to cardiac rehabilitation showed significant regional differences, including two counties (Heves, Vas) where local cardiac rehabilitation was not available. There was a strong correlation between the availability of cardiac rehabilitation beds and the rehabilitation rate.