MZ: KSO cannot enter into force because it is unprepared

- In fact, I should ask the previous health ministers what measures they have taken since March 2023 to make the introduction of the National Oncology Network possible and safe for oncology patients. (...) One thing they did - they set up the National Oncology Council, which, mind you, met once to be constituted, and then went on vacation, I think, and suddenly started to meet after the elections, met several times, with no results of work so far," replied Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna.

The head of the Health Ministry stressed that doubts and concerns about the effects of the introduction of the NSO on April 1 - in this state of preparation - had both experts and representatives of patient organizations. - The National Oncology Network introduced in such a version on April 1 is a recipe for disaster, she said.

Attacked off-microphone by Law and Justice (PiS) deputies, Leszczyna addressed former Health Minister Katarzyna Sójka personally. - Minister Sójka, who was minister for several months and did absolutely nothing on the National Oncology Network, asks about patients. Let me tell you this, Minister. If we had introduced this network at the time you wanted to do it, 7,500 oncology patients would have dropped out of oncology care. You designed the network in such a way that on April 1, 2024, overnight, 259 hospitals in Poland that provide oncology care are excluded from the network. And according to Article 5 of that law, they have no right to implement oncology care. So if you ask about patients, yes, 7,500 patients would be at mortal risk, because cancer is a fatal disease. And basically this one argument - compromising the safety of oncology patients, is completely sufficient to move the implementation of this network.

Leszczyna also pointed out the numerous flaws in the process of preparing the KSO, including doubts about the design and sense of the pilot. She recalled that its results were kept secret by then-Minister Adam Niedzielski and, above all - that the report was written later than the KSO law was passed. - And yet it was the pilot that was supposed to be the basis for the network concept. So what was the pilot for? For the pilot? For, I don't know, throwing PLN 130 million down the drain?

She also pointed out that the regulation on the qualification of hospitals for the various levels of the network should come into force together with the law and a one-year vacatio legis, so that hospitals providing oncology treatment would have a chance to prepare. - The regulation was brought to me for signature at the end of December, she stressed.

She also pointed out the complete lack of IT solutions. - Very important in this whole concept was the electronic eDiLO card. Do you know that in this law they forgot to give a delegation for the functioning of such an eDiLO card? There simply cannot be this card," she said, to which MP Katarzyna Sójka advised from the floor: - Let the minister correct it.