centralised procurement of publicly paid pharmaceuticals for hospital services has been one of the targets of the health system quality and efficiency improvement project supported by the world bank but has so far not been achieved however there has been progress in monitoring overprescription by individual physicians and discussing corrective actions with them the national health plan is the mediumterm planning tool with a timeframe of about three years setting out broad tasks and goals priority areas and the health needs of particular population groups it also specifies actors responsible for implementation deadlines and benchmarking criteria as health needs assessment is not well developed in croatia these objectives are based on basic health monitoring and on existing health care structures