Summary of Medexpress news - December 1, 2022

– We do not exclude such a solution, but we still need some time for specialists to advise us whether this is the moment, in which we can afford it - Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Monday during a visit to Czeladź in response to journalists' questions about the possibility of lifting the state of epidemic threat from January. The fact that talks about the possibility of making such a decision are underway was confirmed by the Minister of Health, Adam Niedzielski, at a press conference on Tuesday. Let us remind you that the state of epidemic threat has been in force since May 16, when the state of epidemic lasting from March 20, 2020 was lifted. In October, the state of epidemic emergency was extended until the end of the year.

Amendments to the regulation on guaranteed benefits in the field of long-term care and care services have been submitted for consultation. The change concerns the system of qualifying people with AIDS to care and treatment facilities and nursing and care facilities. The change will be adapted to the demands of people organizing residential care for these patients in order to reduce the risk of hospitalization and disease progression. In response to the demands of representatives of entities providing long-term care for AIDS patients, it was considered reasonable to abandon the use of the Barthel scale when qualifying AIDS patients for admission to a care and treatment facility or a nursing and care facility. In the case of AIDS patients, the Barthel score should also not be taken into account as a criterion for terminating long-term care services. Recall, today is World AIDS Day.

Changes to Priority Medicine List. The Draft Ordinance of the Minister of Health has been submitted for consultation on this matter. According to it, a new catalog of priority fields of medicine will be defined. Priority areas include: anesthesiology, geriatrics and hematology. The catalog has 22 items.

Last year saw a slight shortening of healthy life expectancy among men. In the case of Polish women, the indicator has not changed, which is both good and bad news. Bad because it is at a low level compared to most developed countries. The Central Statistical Office (GUS) informed on Wednesday about one of the key indicators from the point of view of health policy, i.e. healthy life expectancy. It is, apart from the average life expectancy, the basic measure of the health situation of the society. The data is hardly surprising - in the second year of the pandemic, which was characterized by a record high number of deaths, in which access to medical care was difficult and COVID-19 left its mark in the form of the so-called. long-COVID, it would be hard to expect a trend reversal. More about it on Medexpress.pl