The law on quality will return. What will change?

- This is a topic I can't let go of, because it's too important for patients in Poland," Adam Niedzielski declared during a panel on health care at the European Economic Congress in Katowice. The Health Minister confirmed earlier announcements that the Quality Bill will return to the Sejm. However, it will not be a government bill (so that the minister will not have to submit the draft for public consultation, and the need to explain why he has not done so will fall away), but an MP bill. Such a scenario was already expected a few days ago, when the minister officially announced that the Quality Law would return. What is new are the decisions on the changes that will be made to the draft relative to the law passed in March.

- We want to make a kind of gesture of extending a hand or an olive branch toward the most important comments made during the discussion of the bill," said Adam Niedzielski. - There was a kind of discussion regarding the accreditation center, the Center for Quality Monitoring (CMJ), and here we decided that as part of the amendments, however, we will want to separate the function of the accrediting body from the payer. The law will not contain provisions abolishing the CMJ, it will provide the basis precisely for indicating the institution that will perform this role," he added.

Also to disappear from the bill is the issue of reporting adverse events, which has been causing the most controversy with the medical community. - The whole discussion around the bill shows very clearly that we are not yet ready to decide on the shape of the no-fault clause, it aroused the most controversy, and I think we will separate this issue from the bill and subject it to further discussion, to which, of course, I invite all circles. At the moment, the law on quality will focus primarily on having a legal basis for paying for quality, for measuring it, for the National Health Service to account for it," he said.

- The determination doesn't change, I absolutely believe that this is a key law, changing the philosophy of the system in general, because if we start paying instead of the procedure for the quality of the performance of this procedure then the system, which is financially motivated, will simply react differently," believes Adam Niedzielski.

Dr. Malgorzata Galazka-Sobotka of Lazarski University spoke in a similar vein during the panel discussion. She stressed that from the beginning she was against the plans to abolish the Quality Monitoring Center and combine accreditation with the tasks of contracting and billing for services. At the same time, she stressed that the Quality Act is the beginning of the process of building quality in health care and changing the approach to billing, financing health services. She recalled that countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark, whose experience we are eager to refer to, have for years already shifted (or even moved) to financing the effects of treatment rather than the provision of services themselves.