In the Sejm about postponing the implementation of the National Oncology Network

- The law on the National Oncology Network was adopted by the Sejm in March 2023. Today, we need to carry out its amendment, which postpones the network's entry into force, Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna said on Tuesday, during the first reading of the government's draft amendment to the law, which took place at a meeting of the Health Committee. As enumerated by the head of the Health Ministry, the team appointed by the Health Minister, which was to prepare "among other things, a model for financing oncology care services, standardize reporting and billing data, redefine and update billing products dedicated to rapid oncology diagnosis and therapy, develop rules for verification and validation of services, analyze implementation assumptions for the IT system, etc." - did nothing on the long list of tasks. Leszczyna had already spoken of the non-existent regulations to the law when reporting on the need to halt the entry into force of the KSO.

The amendment pushes back the deadline for implementing the network by a year, but Leszczyna both on Tuesday and Wednesday at the plenary session indicated that such a long time may not be necessary. - The idea is that those tenets of the law that will truly improve the quality of oncology care, speed up diagnosis and coordinate the patient pathway should be implemented as soon as possible. For two reasons: for the sake of the patients, and for the sake of the KPO funds that could go to the health system once the milestones are met," she said during the Health Committee's deliberations. And on Wednesday at the plenary session, addressing Law and Justice deputies pushing to "speed up work" on the entry into force of the NSO, she reminded. - Five years! You had five years to do it. I'm two months into the ministry. And I promise that work on the network will not take five years or even a year.

Indeed, the ruling coalition does not reject the very idea of an oncology network. On the contrary, virtually all MPs speaking in the discussion stressed that streamlining the oncology patient's path in the process of diagnosis and treatment is necessary if we want to deal with the growing problem of cancer incidence and not allow the gap in mortality statistics to widen. However, in order to achieve positive goals, they said, it is necessary to clean up the mess and catch up.

The lack of regulations and instrumentation of the NSO is one thing, but there is a very practical reason why, according to the Health Minister and a large part of the experts, pushing back the cancer network is a necessity. - If we didn't do it, 259 hospitals would fall out of the Network, and 7,500 patients would be left without care and move to highly specialized cancer centers that don't have the space to take care of them, Leszczyna explained.

The Health Ministry also has doubts about the results and sense of the pilot - primarily because first the law was passed, then the conclusions of the pilot were presented (and even then not publicly). The pilot, the minister said, cost PLN 130 million. - The question of what the money spent on the pilot translated into therefore remains open, she pointed out. Defending the pilot (and the whole idea of KSO), Józefa Szczurek-Zelazko (Law and Justice) explained that the funds were spent "to test the coordination of patient care."

All indications are that the Diet will make a decision on the NSO on Thursday.