- Doctors cannot be punished for fighting a human disease at an early stage of development in accordance with the art of medicine and, above all, medical indications, says the president of the Supreme Medical Council, Lukasz Jankowski, referring to the case of penalties imposed by the National Health Fund on doctors prescribing milk replacers with reimbursement. Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna has come out with a settlement proposal.
NIL: (Un)due reimbursement. Breakthrough in the case of penalized doctors
Published June 14, 2024 08:41
fot. NIL
- For many months we have been intervening in the case of penalized doctors. It is the strength of the arguments behind them that also preceded the right decisions about the preparations prescribed. We have proven this, which is why I am glad that Mister Izabela Leszczyna, unlike her predecessors, is not immune to these arguments and has come out with a groundbreaking proposal for a settlement with unjustly punished doctors. This is our joint success and, I hope, the last straight line before we begin work on introducing a system for automating the reimbursement process," the president of the Supreme Medical Council, Lukasz Jankowski, noted.
The Supreme Chamber of Physicians has long been working to amend regulations requiring doctors to specify the level of reimbursement on prescriptions. The NRL has also appointed a team of independent experts for the substantive evaluation of the prescribing of milk replacers, which unanimously concluded that there were medical indications for prescribing these agents in the cases under review, and that penalties for so-called undue reimbursement were wrongly imposed by the National Health Service.
Recent months have been primarily marked by NIL's efforts to intervene with the Minister of Health on the issue of unfairly imposed penalties on physicians and the interest charged on them. This very aspect was the main topic of a meeting between NIL President Dr. Andrea Horvath, a member of the aforementioned NRL expert team, representatives of fined physicians, and Maria Klosinska, head of NIL's Communications Department, with Minister Izabela Leszczyna and Marta Maciażek, director general of the Health Ministry.
The minister acknowledged during the meeting that the current proscription regulations in the context of milk replacers limit the freedom to treat the youngest patients, and when juxtaposed with the Code of Medical Ethics - which puts the patient's welfare first - create a kind of clinch in which doctors find themselves. She pointed out that it is unacceptable to punish for helping sick children. Above all, she stressed her willingness to reach a settlement with the punished doctors, which would involve remission of the fines awarded.
Source: press release
