WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Doctors across Poland on Monday refused to fill out new paperwork to protest new regulations on refunding the cost of medicines that they burdens them with more bureaucracy and makes them financially responsible for mistakes.
Many of Poland’s 120,000 doctors were protesting the regulations, which went into effect this year, by refusing to comply with required paperwork and refusing to state the refund level on their prescriptions.
The new law requires them to determine the extent to which the state National Health Fund should refund medications for patients, a decision determined by a patient’s illness, the medicine being prescribed and other factors. The fund is charged with refunding medical procedures within the national health care system, but often objects to the costs.
Doctors strongly object to a provision that could force them to bear the financial costs in cases where the state health fund decides it has been asked to reimburse patients at too high a level.
An official representing the rights of patients, Barbara Kozlowska, said that in some 19 cases pharmacies had refused to accept incomplete prescriptions.
Health Minister Bartosz Arlukowicz met on Monday with Kozlowska and with the head of the health fund, Jacek Paszkiewicz, but it was not immediately clear whether they found a way to remedy the situation.
An inheritance from the communist system, Poland’s national health care system is cash-strapped and inefficient and under constant reform.
