MZ: Restriction of prescribing machines coming soon

Health Minister Adam Niedzielski announced at a press conference on Friday that the health ministry is working on limiting the ability to issue prescriptions for certain groups of drugs without a personal medical consultation. The minister said that no statutory changes would be needed for this, as - most likely - amendments to the regulation, which are a matter of the next few weeks, would suffice. From Adam Niedzielski's statement, it seems that the ministry first wants to solve the problem of psychotropic drugs. - This is a problem that the Health Ministry takes very seriously, because allowing psychotropic drugs to be taken in an uncontrolled manner leads to the development of addictions. We must all realize that uncontrolled use of such drugs is a huge danger. The Minister of Health, as the person in charge of public health, must respond to such a threat, even if it will result in some kind of inconvenience," said Adam Niedzielski, stressing that the benefits of increased patient safety outweigh the possible losses associated with "inconvenience. - We will always put the health of Poles first," Niedzielski said.

It is not yet certain whether the ministry will decide to limit the possibility of prescribing psychotropic drugs to face-to-face visits at all. The minimum that seems a foregone conclusion is that a first face-to-face visit is required.

That's not all, however. - We analyze the numbers of prescriptions and drugs written per individual doctor. Sometimes they are so high that it seems that the whole process takes place without the doctor's participation at all. This is because sometimes we are talking about hundreds of prescriptions per day per given license to practice. It's physically impossible for a doctor to be able to process information from interviews from so many patients. Therefore, we will introduce certain limitations that will help determine a reasonable number of prescriptions issued by a single doctor," Niedzielski stressed.

The minister stressed that the issue touches on the ethics of the medical profession. In his opinion, the self-government of doctors and dentists should be more strongly involved in combating or stigmatizing the uncontrolled issuance of e-prescriptions. - From the very beginning of the monitoring of this practice, we have asked the Supreme Medical Chamber to take concrete action against doctors who simply transfer their authorizations, thereby transferring the formal basis for issuing prescriptions in such large numbers," he said.