The spokesperson for the Chief Medical Chamber, Jakub Kosikowski, warns that limiting over-execution backing in hospitals will affect patients directly. "We can reduce spending on visits, but at the expense of wellness and time spent in queues," he emphasises.
The subject of overexecution came after the words of Minister Maciej Berk, who stated that paying hospitals for services beyond the established contract is “unfair”. The Minister argued that hospitals should be motivated to supply planned benefits alternatively than to make overexecution. The changes proposed by the National wellness Fund supply for a simplification in payments for over-limit procedures from 100 to 40 percent – this includes, among others, tomography, resonance, gastroscopic, colonoscopy and visits to specialists.
Kosikowski explains that specified services do not bring advanced margins to hospitals and the costs of their implementation are significant. ‘Provisions shall be settled only after 1 year and at a limited level. During this time, hospitals gotta finance them with their own funds or loans, while inflation works,” he explains. In practice, this means that the directors of the facilities can limit patient admission, leading to longer queues and the request for private care.
The Ombudsman stresses that the word ‘overexercise’ is purely method and does not reflect the actual situation. "It is simply a situation where patients' needs exceed the originally foreseen budget. This is not due to abuse or extortion, but to the actual request for treatment," he explains.
Kosikowski recalls the request to reverse the pyramid of benefits, i.e. to transfer diagnostics and treatment from hospitals to clinics, where it is cheaper and more effective. "Depreciating over-execution backing is simply a de facto punishment for treating patients outside the hospital. specified an approach harms the full system" – she estimates.
Lack of access to diagnosis and treatment results in longer medical layoffs, worsening patients' wellness and higher treatment costs at a later phase of the disease. "In the end, we will all pay for these costs – as taxpayers and the state. The direction of this public debate is incomprehensible and harmful for us," Kosikowski concludes.
Comment: As you can see, there are more and more facts that indicate that financing wellness benefits from the Polish budget for Ukrainian citizens completely destroys the finances of our country. Poles, it's time to wake up!
