The law "Constitution for Hospitals"

Health Minister Adam Niedzielski's announcements regarding the quick passage of a new law he calls the "Constitution for Hospitals" will not come true. Law and Justice (PiS) deputy and head of the Health Committee Tomasz Latos has announced that the bill will go to the parliamentary freezer.

Provided for in the draft, the new Agency was to divide hospitals into four categories - from A to D. The criterion for the division was to be the economic situation of individual facilities. According to opposition politicians, this was to allow the disposal of some of them and the replacement of management staff, especially those not affiliated with the ruling party. - We have been working intensively over the past month on this law, one of the serious objections was the establishment of a special agency. We have been working to dispel doubts. The time of crisis is indeed not a good time to establish a new institution, the cost of operation of which is not a few million, but much more," admitted Minister Niedzielski. 

The Polish Federation of Hospitals gave a negative assessment of Minister Niedzielski's project. Although an important task of the project is the modernization of hospitality, the project's provisions lack"solutions that significantly contribute to modernization, which Polish hospitals badly need." Missing, according to PFSz, are provisions for support for energy transformation, digitization and automation, introduction of solutions in the area of augmented and artificial intelligence, medical robotics, innovative methods of diagnosis and therapy, modern solutions in the area of human capital management and organization of hospitals, creation of patient traffic management centers, coordinated care and care based on the outcome of treatment - key aspects of modernization.

Instead of improving the efficiency of hospitality, the draft treats this area"instrumentally through an emphasis on reporting, control and examination of hospital directors, selective treatment of universities providing postgraduate studies in the area of management useful to hospital directors, micromanagement by the new Hospital Development Agency (incidentally having only development in its name), marginal treatment of coordinated care and value-based care for patients. categorization of hospitals on the basis of arbitrarily chosen indicators of a strictly financial nature, emphasis on cost reduction, proposals for the qualifications of hospital supervisors that are in significant disproportion to the requirements for hospital managers, along with provisions for the lack of accountability of these people for their actions, devaluation of the supervisory and ownership bodies of hospitals - that is, provisions that do not lead to improvements in efficiency."

There are too many hospitals in Poland, says Tadeusz Jedrzejczyk, director of the Health Department of the Marshal's Office of Pomorskie Voivodeship and former president of the National Health Fund. It is generally known that the current system needs to be replaced, but for now it is not clear with what. However, this cannot be done without the development of primary health care and outpatient specialized care. New technologies are also important, namely telemedicine and e-health solutions. And, of course, prevention. I have the impression that formally there is a buzz about it, but in fact not much is happening - he added.