Health Minister Ewa Kopacz announced on Monday in Gdańsk that in a dozen or so days at a special press conference she will present planned comprehensive changes in the entire health system.
As she said, the changes will range from learning and rebalancing the staff, transforming hospitals, additional insurance, changes to the way people sign up for surgery, to drug policy.
The minister announced that she would launch a new plan B, a program transforming hospitals into companies. Ewa Kopacz stated that it would contain new incentives for hospitals to transform. This will be an opportunity for institutions that, with the hump of old debt, are not able to generate enough profit to improve both quality and wages – she emphasized.
She announced that she would present solutions for additional insurance and a quick path to obtain compensation as part of the compensation granted for medical malpractice.
The minister revealed that the changes will also be aimed at an effective fight against pharmaceutical companies that so far impose drug prices and sometimes margins.
She emphasized that the proposed laws were also to include solutions for the training of young staff and the quick release of the missing specialists to the market.
Kopacz also informed that in order to shorten the queues for specialist treatments and operations, the Ministry plans to introduce an IT system in the National Health Fund requiring the PESEL number of the enrolling patient. It will not be possible to deceive anyone – she emphasized.
Kopacz said the ministry checked the credibility of data on queues for the most crowded hip and knee operations as well as cataracts across the country. It turned out that where we had a queue of 1200 people waiting for the operation, after verification and checking, it became a queue of only 20 people – she emphasized. She informed that the queue was shortened because, for example, the same patient was registered in several places or it turned out that several hundred people from the queue had already been operated on.
On Monday in Gdańsk, the minister participated in the commissioning of another modern helicopter for the Polish Medical Air Rescue.
Gdańsk is the fourth base of the Polish Medical Air Rescue, which has one of the most modern rescue helicopters in Europe since Monday. The duty in the region was started by Eurocopter – EC 135 helicopter. Previously, similar machines were delivered in Szczecin, Kraków and Warsaw.
The Ministry of Health has ordered 23 helicopters for the Polish Medical Air Rescue. According to the contract, all of them are to be delivered to Poland by the end of the year. The new helicopters are to be in service for over 20 years.
The new helicopter – unlike the previously operated one – can also fly at night. By the end of the year, three round-the-clock landing sites adapted to night machine operation will be built in the Pomeranian Voivodeship. A new base of the Air Ambulance Service is also to be built in Gdańsk. (PAP)