2025-06-03 17:30
publication
2025-06-03 17:30
The hospital reform project assumes aid packages and repair plans for indebted hospitals – Deputy Minister of Health Jerzy Szafranowicz said on Tuesday in the Sejm. He added that the local government would decide about the possible closure of the branch.
Deputy Minister of Health announced that the hospital reform project is ready and MZ wants to present it within two weeks on a permanent committee of the Council of Ministers.
According to Szafranowicz, this project in The problem of poviat hospitals solves a very interesting way. He said that until now there was a tendency to pay off debts and this was not associated with obligations for hospitals. “In this project, in addition to aid and financial packages, there are also repair plans,” explained Deputy Minister of Health.
Szafranowicz gave an example of hospitals in Lesko, Ustrzyki and Sanok, 20-25 km away from each other. He said that their managers, directors and local governments agreed and wrote a recovery plan, which assumes connecting these hospitals in Konglomerate. Szafranowicz pointed out that each of these hospitals decided to close a ward to another hospital so as not to compete with each other.
He said that representatives of the Ministry of Health or the National Health Fund did not make a decision to close the hospital ward, but the founding body. “No decision on our part was made to close the branches and such decisions will not be made. These will be arbitrary decisions of local governments,” said Szafranowicz.
He noted that it is impossible to defend the obstetric department, where about 200 births take place annually, when another obstetric department operates 10-15 km away. He emphasized that it was a matter of patient safety. Szafranowicz noticed that in such a situation a doctor and a midwife working in the duty system take two or three births a month, which does not guarantee a reliable work.
In the second half of May, the Minister of Health Izabela Leszczyna said that the hospital reform project would include a financial mechanism on which hospital directors wanted to support the indebted institutions entering the repair program by Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK). “If the hospital after the implementation of the recovery program begins to balance and ceases to have an annual loss, then one tenth debt will be discontinued each year,” Leszczyna explained. She added that the current debt of hospitals is about PLN 27 billion.
It will be the fourth proposal of hospital reform prepared by the Ministry of Health. In April, the third version of the project was in the schedule of the work of the Council of Ministers, but the government did not accept the project. The local government side of the Government and Local Government Committee then pointed out that the project did not have financial tools that directly support hospital restructuring.
According to the concept of health care system presented in July last year, hospitals financially unstable or inconsistent with benefits maps were to count on targeted funds as part of “transformation processes”, preferential points in competitions to adapt to “benefits maps” and changing the profile of activity and to instruments Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK).
The announced “ad hoc support package” of the hospital assumed, among others conversion of due liabilities (determined as at July 1, 2024) in a long -term loan granted by BGK. In turn, the long -term support package assumed a mechanism of conditional debt relief. In the concept of the Ministry of Health, the debt was to be converted into a ten -year loan in BGK guaranteed by the creating entity. According to the concept, it was to be released in the amount of one tenth every year for 10 years, provided that the hospital implements the repair program and balances.
Poviat hospitals usually lead an internal one, general surgery, cardiology, orthopedics, pediatrics, gynecology and obstetrics. Every year, about seven million people use them. (PAP)
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