A doctor without a diploma? Loophole allows fraud

In recent days, the media revealed information about a doctor who, working in a prescribing office with a conditional PWZ, prescribed powerful painkillers, including fentanyl - without the personal consultation required by law. Upon checking, it turned out that the man did not even have a medical degree. - Today, working as a doctor in Poland can be done by a person who has no medical knowledge, but has a working printer and prints out a college diploma. Today, being a doctor in Poland depends on a statement that someone knows the Polish language, which cannot be verified according to the regulations," said Lukasz Jankowski, president of the Supreme Medical Council, on Friday. As he assessed, at the moment there are about two hundred people in Poland who practice the medical profession, although their knowledge and qualifications as well as their knowledge of the language have not been verified. Medical chambers do not supervise them. - Such people are employed, for example, in prescribers and issue prescriptions for drugs that should be strictly limited and restricted for a certain group of patients, Jankowski said.

It all started in the fall of 2020, when a political decision was made to open the labor market to non-EU doctors during the second wave of the pandemic. To be precise, primarily from across Poland's eastern border. Primarily for doctors from Belarus and Ukraine, although also from other - also from the Polish point of view very exotic - directions, such as the Philippines. The government decided to amend the regulations in such a way as to make it impossible for the medical self-government to "sabotage" attempts to employ doctors in Polish hospitals, and in the course of the work on amending the regulations it was repeatedly emphasized that the directors of medical entities employing them would be responsible for the quality of work of such doctors with conditional PWZ. The protests of the self-government were to no avail, and as early as January 2021 Minister Adam Niedzielski solemnly handed the first five decisions to doctors from Belarus and Ukraine, decisions allowing them to practice medicine in Poland without a PWZ issued by the medical chamber.

- We are deeply moved by recent media reports that unverified people are working as doctors in Poland. We are moved, but not surprised. Since November 2020, we have been calling for a change in the law," Jankowski stressed, assessing that it was then that "it was allowed that in Poland people who are not in the register of the Medical Chamber, who are not subject to professional responsibility and the code of medical ethics, work as doctors without supervision and control.

The president of the NRL also presented a response from the Ministry of Health to the Chamber's question about supervision of such persons. - We received information that the Department of Medical Personnel does not check the authenticity of documents presented in the so-called simplified procedure. This, in turn, means that in extreme cases people who literally print out their diplomas on a printer can work as doctors. - Defective regulations are to blame, not the ministry, because we have been fobbed off with regulations that result in not verifying that a person's training program complies with the minimum guidelines in effect for doctors in the EU, he pointed out.

Another problem is the lack of verification of knowledge of the Polish language by a proper exam - people are admitted on the basis of a statement. The local government is demanding a change in the law, a return to the pre-November 2020 legal status regarding the admission of non-EU-educated people to the medical profession, and a review of those decisions that have been made in the last four years.

As early as Monday, representatives of the local government will meet with the leadership of the Ministry of Health and discuss, among other things, further sealing the possibility of issuing prescriptions for powerful painkillers. - Taking advantage of the holes in our system, today it can be done by a person even from outside the borders of our country, can abuse the trust of doctors and patients, Jankowski said.