National Report Poland - May 2024

The 3 main current concerns of the Polish healthcare system:

1. Degradation of medical education

2. Further complication of prescription reimbursement

3. Lack of employment and working time standards

1. Degradation of medical education

Since September 2023 there are 14 new medicine faculties in Poland and most of them have negative opinion of Polish Accreditation Committee. There are at the universities that previously didn’t have any medicine related faculties (nursery, pharmacy). The lack of teaching personnel and infrastructure is our main concern. With new faculties came change in legislation and teaching standards that may cause further degradation of medical education. All this is caused by the decision of former minister of education, and although we have been assured by current minister of health that with cooperation with minister of education they will stop production of new faculties, there is no actual will of doing so.

2. Further complication of prescription reimbursement

 Doctors are still responsible for determination of prescription reimbursement. From few years we have new kind of reimbursement for children and elderly people and before writing a prescription with reimbursement for those groups of people we have to check they haven’t had this drug already prescribed. This is another thing that takes our time from the patient.

3. Lack of employment and working time standards

Since we don’t have any employment and working time regulations, the rules of working code should apply. However, in many places they are not respected. A lot of doctors work over 48h a week, don’t have free Monday after Saturday shift and take care of more patients than they should. That causes burnout, health problems of medical staff and may harm our patients. We formed a team for employment and working time standards establishment by our ministry of health and we hope to have results in the near future.