18 Poles signed a petition addressed to Minister Konstanty Radziwiłł. Heart patients do not agree to reducing the amount of money spent by the Ministry of Health on cardiology. – It is condemning us to certain death – says Marian Saska, president of the EkoSerce Association. Zawałowcy ask the minister to meet and discuss the changes before they come into force. Medonet organized such a debate * with the participation of experts a month ago. Konstanty Radziwiłł, the Minister of Health, was invited, but unfortunately neither he nor any of the ministry officials showed up.
The development of interventional cardiology in the last 15 years in Poland has resulted in a decrease in deaths from heart attacks by as much as half. And still, cardiovascular diseases are still the main cause of death in Poles.
Today, Polish doctors are able to save most patients, because we have over 150 invasive cardiology centers with XNUMX-hour duty. This is what richer countries envy us. Because thanks to this, even from the smallest village, a patient with a heart attack will hit within the so-called golden hour to the hospital, where cardiac surgeons will open a closed vessel leading blood to his heart. – Invasive cardiology units have to wait for the patient. There is a “golden hour” when rescue measures can be taken. If we create demand, supply, and manipulate it, many people will not receive the immediate medical attention they need and will either die or become crippled along the way. The success of Law and Justice under previous governments, when Professor Religa was the Minister of Health, was that cardiology units began to function somehow. Let us urge the government not to waste it today – says Dr. Adam Sandauer, honorary president of the Primum Non Nocere Patient Association.
Will it soon be just a melody from the past?
– The proposal to drastically reduce the cost of many procedures by several dozen percent is grossly different from the actual costs of treatment reported by hospitals – says prof. Jacek Legutko from the Polish Society of Cardiology. – Even if the valuation of some procedures could be reduced, the funds should be used for innovative methods of treatment in cardiology – says prof. dr hab. med. Janina Stępińska, head of the Intensive Cardiac Therapy Clinic at the Warsaw Institute of Cardiology.
The ministry explains that the money saved on invasive cardiology will be spent on prophylaxis, and that prevention is better than cure. And Poles often have heart attacks at their own request, because they are not aware of how badly a bad diet, lack of exercise, smoking and frequent drinking of alcohol affect their circulatory system.
Doctors are also outraged by the fact that the ministry has not consulted them on the introduced changes. They say that the valuation of life-saving procedures in interventional cardiology in Poland is lower than in many European countries. In our country, the average cost of treating acute myocardial infarction is EUR 2395. For comparison, in Estonia twice as much, and in Austria almost five times as much.
The new valuations will enter into force in January 2017.
* In the discussion organized by Medonet about new valuations and the uncertain future of Polish cardiology, the following persons talked: prof. Paweł Buszman, cardiologist, President of the Board of the Polish-American Heart Clinics, prof. dr hab. n. med. Adam Witowski, cardiologist, head of the Department of Cardiology and Interventional Angiology, prof. Jan Baron, member of the Main Board of the Polish Medical Society of Radiology, dr hab. med. Sławomir Dobrzycki, head of the Invasive Cardiology Clinic of the University Teaching Hospital in Białystok, Dr. Halina Krześniak, MD, Vice-director of the Department of Medical Certification, Social Insurance Institution, prof. dr hab. n. med. Anna Wilmowska-Pietruszyńska, president of the Polish Society of Medical Certification and Dr. Adam Sandauer, honorary president of the Primum Non Nocere Patient Association. The debate was chaired by Grażyna Olbrych, Program Director of Onet Styl Życia.