- E-registration is there so that we can meaningfully cancel appointments we can't make, so that queue coordinators keep an eye out for slots," said Izabela Leszczyna.
As the Health Minister added, the implementation of centralized electronic registration will be a process, so from June it will be available only to selected specialties. It is not yet known which ones. What is known, however, is that those who are not digitally literate will use e-registration via a hotline.
The need for a unified, centralized system for booking and cancelling appointments has long been talked about. The problem to be solved in this way is queues to specialists. As it turns out, these are largely generated by patients booking appointments but not attending them.
Such unused appointments, in the first half of last year alone, amounted to nearly half a million. The largest number, 45 percent, concerned orthopedics and traumatology of the musculoskeletal system - a specialty for which queues are among the longest. Nearly 13 percent of missed appointments were for another beleaguered specialty - endocrinology.
- Accessibility to doctors will certainly be better in this term, and queues will be shorter. I work with experts from the Ministry of Health, but not only - also with outsiders, untainted by the system," Izabela Leszczyna stressed.
