New minister, old problems. Medical self-government: there will be no new opening

There was a personnel change at the Health Ministry last week. - The new Minister of Health, Jolanta Sobierańska-Grenda, with a firm hand and against circumstances and various interests, brought order and order to hospitals in the Pomeranian province. In the coming days, this ministry will pass into the hands of management professionals only. The only goal will be to improve the situation of patients and, I will say brutally, not to improve the situation of doctors," Prime Minister Donald Tusk said when introducing his new colleague.

The NRL president began the briefing by commenting on the statement, which the medical community considered an attack. - There have been personnel changes, but this does not advance real change. We also hear that doctors are to blame for everything in health care. They are pulling out those legendary salaries of those 209 doctors who earn more than 100,000 on contracts. We oppose this. We want to talk, not about some contrived ideas to pit the public against us, but about specifics," said Lukasz Jankowski during the conference, referring directly to the Prime Minister's words.

There were a lot of these specifics, which the doctors had been discussing with the Health Ministry for several months - the problem is that the talks, promises and words ended. Implementation and decisions were lacking. Jankowski presented a long list of more than a dozen points of announcements of systemic changes made by Izabela Leszczyna (and her colleagues) during her tenure - none of these points were implemented.

Doctors are particularly disappointed about the higher good clause (no fault system). Also because this issue seemed a foregone conclusion, as Justice Minister Adam Bodnar was very quick to declare himself fully open to amending the law to remove criminal liability from doctors for inadvertent errors. The medical self-government hoped that the takeover of the case by the justice ministry even prejudged success. However, this did not happen. - Both the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice declared that by the end of 2024 this clause would be in place. The next deadline was spring 2025. In the spring of 2025, a team was set up in the Ministry of Health to take a fresh look at the higher good clause regulations. We still don't have a no fault system today," Jankowski concluded.

The government has failed to meet deadlines for presenting amendments to the Criminal Code toughening penalties for attacks on medical personnel (and more broadly, it has failed to deliver on the lion's share of promises related to increasing the safety of doctors, which were made after the death of Dr. Tomasz Solecki, who was killed by an aggressive patient). Reimbursement automation has not been introduced, the promise to eliminate the simplified procedure for granting PWZs to physicians has been retracted and now, presumably, schools with negative PKA ratings will be given the opportunity to recruit students for medical degrees. The government, in the opinion of the medical chamber, is acting chaotically - on the one hand, the MPC wants to fight charlatanry, on the other hand, businesses based precisely on quackery services (e.g., bioresonance) are normalized by Polish Classification of Activities codes.

Lukasz Jankowski stressed that the local government wants to cooperate with the new health minister, but stipulated that the government cannot expect any "new opening" and cancellation of promises that have already been made. Doctors still expect the fulfillment of what has been announced.