Minimum 5 years of experience. A major shift in disability assessments.

An important change in the rules of operation of disability assessment teams

The Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy has submitted for public consultation a deregulatory draft amendment to the regulation on determining disability and the degree of disability .

The project published on the website of the Government Legislation Centre envisages allowing doctors in the process of specialization and with at least 5 years of professional experience to adjudicate at the Social Insurance Institution .

The Ministry explained in the impact assessment of the regulation that it is a response to the situation related to the limited number of doctors in the country, including staffing shortages in disability assessment teams related to the employment of doctors.

- Expanding the list of doctors authorized to adjudicate in adjudicating panels will undoubtedly contribute to increasing the frequency of adjudicating panels' meetings , and thus to shortening the waiting time for interested parties and children for the scheduled date of the adjudicating panel's meeting - indicated the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy.

The draft regulation expands the group of persons eligible to assume the function of chairman of the adjudicating panel to include a physician undergoing specialization training (in a specific field of medicine and having completed the 2nd basic module appropriate for a given specialization training or the third year of this training in the case of specializations for which a uniform training module has been provided, in particular in the following fields of medicine: internal medicine, pediatrics, orthopedics and traumatology of the musculoskeletal system, neurology, psychiatry, ophthalmology and otolaryngology).

The document also introduces the possibility of appointing a physician who has been practicing the profession for at least 5 years as the chairman of the panel, excluding the periods:

• practicing the profession for the purpose of completing a postgraduate internship,
• practicing a profession on the basis of a conditional right to practice a profession,
• practicing a profession on the basis of the right to practice a profession within a specific scope of professional activities, period and place of employment in a healthcare facility.

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