Excess of realized home-based long-term care nursing services is paid at 50 percent. - This is the maximum we can give. This is not due to malice," assured Deputy Health Minister Jerzy Szafranowicz during Wednesday's meeting of the Health Committee.
The money is not there and will not be
Published April 4, 2025 07:38
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On April 2, the Parliamentary Health Committee addressed the problems of home-based long-term care nursing. Nurses have been fighting in recent months to improve the possibility of providing services also in the area of long-term care in the patient's place of residence, but, as they pointed out, the waiting time for such services has already extended up to a year.
The nurses recalled during the meeting that on the issue of long-term home care they met with Deputy Health Minister Jerzy Szafranowicz in August. Topics of discussion included low valuations of these services. This problem was compounded by the fact that the Fund decided to settle liabilities for 2024 on a degressive basis, as in many other scopes of limited benefits. In long-term care, the value of the overdraft reached PLN 60 million, the payer financed it in half.
Deputy Health Minister Jerzy Szafranowicz, in turn, spoke about the difficult financial situation of the health care system. - We must realize the situation of the NFZ budget. The financial plan for 2025 has still not been signed. We know that it lacks a dozen billion or so," he explained, admitting that the decision on the level of payment of surplus contracts was made jointly by the leadership of the Health Ministry and the NFZ. - This is the maximum we can give. This is not out of malice, but it is the upper limit today. It would be irresponsible to declare that we will pay out more," he said.
Moreover, no increase in valuations can be expected in the current year, because... there is no money. Szafranowicz admitted that in November the MZ asked the management of the National Health Fund for a position on "the possibility of changing the level of financing of services, in accordance with the results of the AOTMiT analysis." Last year's analysis, related to increases as of July 1, 2024, when the new average price of a billing unit for the provision of long-term home nursing care was to rise from PLN 61.50 to PLN 74.92. The NFZ, in response to that request, conveyed that the financial plan for 2025 does not include the cost increase. - We can't force the NFZ president to introduce increased pricing when there is no money in the plan. We will introduce such a forecast in the plan for the following year," the deputy head of the Health Ministry announced.
