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According to the new ordinance of the Minister of Health, a primary health care physician is required to physically examine every patient over 60 years of age diagnosed with COVID-19. The examination should take place within 48 hours. from the detection of an infection. In the opinion of the Healthcare Employers ‘Agreement (Healthcare Employers’ Agreement), this provision is very harmful and poses a threat to other patients who will not be accepted by the doctor. Also because he himself, as an exposed person, may end up in isolation. “It will also deepen the collapse of the health care system in Poland” – write the representatives of the Health Protection Center in an appeal to Adam Niedzielski.
- Healthcare professionals point out that in the first two days after the detection of the infection, there is no chance to detect symptoms suggesting a severe course of COVID-19
- Visits to infected seniors who tolerate the infection well will take place at the expense of other patients who really suffer
- The health care center alerts you that medics, who are regularly exposed to infection, will end up in isolation, and this will disrupt the operation of the clinic and the implementation of the vaccination program, carried out, among others, by in POZ
- Below we also present the views of other family doctors on the new regulation
- More information can be found on the Onet homepage
Other patients will pay for visits to seniors
In a letter addressed to the Minister of Health, Bożena Janicka, president of the PPOZ, indicates that the provision obliging GPs to directly assess the health of patients 60+ staying in isolation does not have any medical or epidemiological justification. According to the PPOZ, the examination at such an early stage of the infection is pointless because the patient does not show symptoms suggesting a severe course of the disease (these appear at the earliest on the third or even fifth day after the infection).
– Secondly, interstitial pneumonia in the course of COVID-19 is rarely detectable with a stethoscope: the essential indicator of monitoring the health of a patient with COVID-19 is its saturation, which can be successfully studied at a distance. Direct physical examination should therefore only concern the situation of deterioration of the patient’s health – he points out.
- See also: Coronavirus causes acute interstitial pneumonia. Conversation with a pulmonologist
According to PPOZ other patients, both those suffering from COVID-19 and those suffering from other diseases, who really need a doctor’s help, will pay for visits to seniors who do not require medical intervention. The introduced regulations will make it difficult for them to access clinics and may expose them to deterioration of health and pose a threat to life.
Doctors are also confined to isolation
Another problem raised by health care workers in their letter to the minister is the potential absence of doctors due to being confined to isolation.
– (…) it is only a matter of days or weeks for a large number of COVID-19 cases among family medicine clinicsbecause we have single cases today. Primary health care facilities do not have such protective measures as are provided by hospital facilities. (…) In a situation of constant contact with patients suffering from COVID-19, a temporary shutdown of the operation of a significant part of primary health care clinics – often conducted alone – due to the infection of staff with the SARS-CoV-2 virus is practically certain today. This will further deepen the collapse of the health care system in Poland.
The lack of availability of doctors is also expected to affect the implementation of the preventive vaccination program, which is carried out, among others, by just in POZ.
– The expectation that a GP will be able to magically reorganize his work so that there is time to admit such patients is difficult to treat otherwise than in terms of wishful thinking: there are no more staff reserves in primary health care to provide additional benefits – it was written.
The PPOZ appeals to Minister Niedzielski to “immediately revise his position”. – If this does not happen, it is due to the ordinance of the Minister basic health care in Poland will face a catastrophe that will have a direct impact on the life and health of Polish patients ».
Family doctors on the regulation of the Minister of Health: “This is nonsense”
Other doctors also expressed their opposition to the new point in the strategy of fighting the pandemic in Poland. Bow. Jacek Gleba, an internist, pediatrician and family doctor, said in an interview with Medonet directly: – In my opinion, this is nonsense. After all, positive patients are very different. There are symptomatic patients who require urgent treatment, there are moderately symptomatic patients who need treatment within 24 hours and there are also patients who should stay at home and not go anywhere – he explained.
As he added, in Warsaw clinics you already have to wait several days for an appointment with a family doctor. – And how to make COVID-19 patients get it guaranteed within 48 hours, I don’t know. Maybe you need to multiply doctors? I have no idea, really. It is very easy to invent or say, but not so easy to do. There is no chance of implementation, it is a completely empty idea when it comes to execution possibilities – he summed up.
The drug spoke in a similar vein. Anna Krzyszowska-Kamińska from Wrocław. – Why should age be the criterion I should follow when choosing patient care? (…) We’ve always tested those who required it, and now I will test those who are positive, even if they have almost no symptoms. It can turn you crazy. I must admit that we are appalled by this regulation, it disorganizes our work a lot. (…) We will start to jerk it off the visits of other patients – he admits.
- Also read: GP doctor: soon we will not be able to see all patients in need
– The minister allowed himself to say that we can do it after 18. And that a little more goodwill is needed. I think that we have a lot of good will, it is difficult to accuse us of its lack – comments the drug. Małgorzata Stokowska-Wojda, internist and family doctor from Łaszczów in the province of Lublin. – I felt as if I needed a ministerial decree for me to examine these patients. It sounded like that. (…) We have been doing for a long time what the minister says at press conferences. It looks like the minister of health has no idea how clinics work, what we are doing there. This is a serious undermining of confidence in us. I do not know what it is for – she added.
The full text of the PPOZ letter to the Minister of Health is available HERE.
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