Nurses on the hospital reform project: to the bin

The Polish National Trade Union of Nurses and Midwives in a letter to the Minister of Health, Adam Niedzielski, presents comments on the draft act on the modernization and improvement of the efficiency of hospitality. The opinion of the union is negative.

The assessment results mainly from the fact that the bill:

• does not envisage an increase in hospital funding,
• does not describe the effects of the law on hospital staff, and its only "positive" impact on the labor market is to be the employment of bureaucrats at the Hospital Development Agency,
• the role of trade unions in the processes of liquidation and transformation of hospitals was omitted - the participation of trade unions in consultations and restructuring procedures, etc. was not provided for.
• the act does not provide for any procedure for transferring employees who lose their jobs as a result of hospital restructuring to a new medical entity with the continuity of their work guaranteed by Art. 231p.
• no social protection for employees of liquidated and transformed hospitals.

Moreover, as indicated by OZZPiP, the time of consulting such fundamental changes in the hospital system in the period of the greatest wave of COVID-19 pandemic infections was exceptionally unfortunate by the Ministry of Health.

The union deems it necessary to take corrective measures in health care, but the implementation of the presented draft law in this wording may have effects similar to the tax laws of the "Polish Order". This is another, after the act on the network of hospitals, reform without a payer and contrary to the assumptions of the previous act.

Detailed assessment: HERE

Source: OZZPiP