Another approach to hospital reform. The project returns in the already known version

At its next meeting, on Tuesday, July 1, the Council of Ministers is to deal with the hospital reform, i.e. the draft amendment to the act on health care services financed from public funds.

Let us recall that the act introducing the hospital reform has already been close to being adopted by the government several times , but in the final stretch it returned to further agreements – whether social or inter-ministerial. On one such occasion, the Minister of Health Izabela Leszczyna said that "it will need another lap" and this term has permanently stuck to the reform. The problem is that it is no longer fully known how to count these laps – whether referring to subsequent versions of the project or rounds of consultations.

- In fact, this is theoretically the fourth lap, but in fact the first in this respect, that the idea that we have been showing from the beginning is still relevant, at least in terms of two main processes: transformation and deregulation - said at the end of May, during a meeting with directors of district hospitals, Piotr Nowicki, a member of the ministerial team for developing the reform, director of the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology.

Importantly, the consulted project is not a comprehensive reform. Only some of its elements related to the implementation of the milestone in the KPO were included in it. In addition, additional changes are necessary in other acts, including on medical activity, on financing health services from public funds. The second part of the reform is to include, among others, financial assistance for hospitals by exchanging the liabilities of hospitals for a 10-year loan from the Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, with the possibility of its cancellation.

After the presidential elections, an offensive was to be launched concerning the reform of the hospital system. The government assumed that Rafał Trzaskowski would win and that nothing would stand in the way of completing the project. Currently, the problem - as explained in the ruling camp - was to be Andrzej Duda. It was assumed that the incumbent president would not sign the government bill. Before the second round of elections, Izabela Leszczyna announced a legislative offensive for June, i.e. a package of projects concerning the reform of hospitals, amendment of the act on remuneration and deregulation. So far, however, none of these projects have been presented and it seems that the unfavourable election result for the government is not the only reason for this state of affairs.

What version of the bill will go to the government meeting? It is hard to say. The documents posted on the RCL website, dated June 25, include an attached bill from April, containing a provision on a simplified system for recognizing doctors' qualifications, which became a pretext for withdrawing it last time. However, it is possible that these changes are correlated with the actions of the Ministry of Interior and Administration, which on the same day (June 25) submitted for consultation a draft amendment to the Act on Assistance to Ukrainian Citizens in Connection with the Armed Conflict on the Territory of That Country and Certain Other Acts, which also contains changes in the so-called simplified procedure.

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