MZ: more than PLN 1.1 billion for hospital consolidation

Health Minister Jolanta Sobieranska-Grenda announced as early as the end of September that she planned to mobilize about a billion zlotys from the Medical Fund to support hospital consolidation efforts. This was supposed to be in addition to the loan mechanism from the BGK promised during the work on the so-called Hospital Law (work on it is still in progress, all indications are that it will have to be written into law, so this will definitely prolong the waiting time for its launch), but for now the concrete is only the announcement of the competition and the approximation of details - for what purposes and in what amount hospitals can receive funding. And, in fact, funding, because, as the Health Minister said, the ministry plans to finance the winning applications at 100 percent of the project's value.

This is good news, but worse news is that the money will not be seen by hospitals any time soon. The call will last until October 30 and the results will be published - assuming no delays caused, for example, by the huge number of applications - only in March next year. Payments will be made only after the consolidation processes are completed.

The minimum value of a grant application must be more than PLN 2 million. The maximum amount of the earmarked grant is PLN 20 million for intra-entity consolidation (for example, mergers or conversions of wards) and PLN 70 million for inter-entity consolidation. The Health Ministry wants to encourage especially county hospitals that are close to each other to enter the consolidation path, even in selected scopes, and announces that it will particularly favorably analyze projects with at least three entities (although this does not mean that other proposals will not have a chance in the competition). An important goal of the consolidation process is to ensure, on the one hand, an adequate level of provision for the health needs of the population, and on the other, to break the race for medical staff (primarily specialist doctors), which is expected to result in a reduction in salary pressure, which is currently one of the main problems adding to the costs of health care facilities.