Health Ministry announces legislative work on POZ law

In response, they received assurances that the Ministry of Health is planning to undertake legislative work to amend the regulations in the direction of guaranteeing the validity of the declaration, regardless of joining the POZ team. - Everything is moving in the right direction! The MZ has bent over backwards in accordance with our suggestions expressed in the letter, and this means that patient safety from 2025 will be preserved! - Bozena Janicka, president of PPOZ, emphasizes.

PPOZ physicians' doubts and concerns were caused by provisions stating that if a patient chose providers who do not form a PPOZ team, their declarations would lose their validity as of December 31, 2024. - The fact that the choice made by the recipient is to determine the expiration of the declaration is unacceptable to PPOZ! - they stressed in a letter to Izabela Leszczyna, pointing out the high harmfulness of the provisions, which could eventually lead to drastic economic consequences for the continued operation of the POZ.

In response to PPOZ's letter, the Ministry of Health assured PPOZ that it plans to undertake legislative work to amend the law to guarantee the validity of declarations, regardless of joining the POZ team, and to remove the provisions of the Law of October 27, 2017 on primary health care, which assume that those declarations of intent of patients submitted to providers who do not join the POZ team will also lose their validity as of December 31, 2024.

Referring to the issue of the POZ team, the MZ noted that there is currently no direct regulation indicating the formal-legal model that the concluded cooperation between the members of the POZ team: the POZ doctor, the POZ nurse and the POZ midwife should adopt. (...) "The legislator, outlining only the legal definition of this concept, decided to leave the freedom to determine the legal or contractual tool as to the form and framework of cooperation directly to the members of the POZ team, allowing them to autonomously designate the manner of concluding the agreement and to determine the rules of communication between the various members of the team. (...) Within the framework of the measures taken, it was not and is not the intention of the Minister of Health to cause a restriction on the ability of various medical entities and professional practices, including individual or group practices, to operate within the framework of POZ.

The MZ also referred to coordinated care, which in the opinion of the MZ - is a response to the current needs of the public health service, and to the - repeatedly raised by PPOZ - issue of a coordinator supporting medical staff. (...) " The Health Ministry's work in the near future will focus, among other things, on increasing the range of available services and further development of OK. Organizational solutions will allow for increased cooperation between the doctor providing services within the framework of ambulatory specialized care (AOS), and the doctor, nurse and midwife of primary care." (...) "An important role in the support system for both patients and staff of medical facilities is played by the coordinator, who becomes the patient's guide. He is a kind of glue, organizing the area of cooperation between all members of the POZ team, thereby relieving to some extent the burden on medical staff, who can focus more attention on therapeutic activities. The functioning of the coordinator and the expansion of his functions provide support for medical staff in the organization of the provision of health services, including already at the level of POZ."

Source: PPOZ