The government has made an attempt to ease the dispute over prescriptions between doctors. The Ministry of He alth proposes that patients, when visiting a doctor, should declare that they are insured. The medics jointly inform that from January they will not post any information on prescriptions whether the patient is en titled to insurance, and thus to buy reimbursed drugs.
Therefore, patients are at risk that after the New Year they will be forced to pay the full price for drugs in pharmacies after the New Yearprescription , because the issue of theNational He alth Fund will not be resolved. It is worth noting that the National He alth Fund spends over PLN 8 billion on reimbursement every year, thanks to which patients pay only PLN 2.5 billion.
Reimbursed drugs - doctors' indignation with the provisions of the Act
There was a great deal of indignation in the medical community about the news that the doctor would be required to include information about the patient'sinsuranceon the prescription. The role of the doctor is to heal, and not to verify the patient's rights. He does not have the appropriate tools for this purpose, moreover, the time of the visit should be devoted to the patient and his ailments, and not to bureaucracy. Doctors rebelled a lot. On social networks, trade unions and medical self-governments were in turmoil. Medics began to demand that the provisions stating that the National He alth Fund may order them to pay back money for a wrongly prescribed prescription be removed from the Reimbursement Act, when a doctor writes a reimbursed prescription to a patient who is not en titled to it. Doctors decided that if they were to be held responsible for the error, they would not enter this information on the prescription at all. Such a position was issued in a statement by the Supreme Medical Council. In addition, other solutions provided for in the act were also objected to, such as the doctor's obligation to include information on the reimbursement level of each drug on the prescription. It can be 30, 50 or 100 percent. prices or a lump sum of PLN 3.20. Doctors suggested that the NHF should settle these issues.
Patient sign yourself
The last idea of the Ministry to solve the problem of who is to adjudicate on insurance charges is to propose that the patient, during a visit to the doctor, should submit a written declaration that he or she is insured. The head of the Medicines Department of the Ministry of He alth, Artur Fałek, comments that the He alth Actsays that the patient must present a document that confirms his right to he alth services. Since the creation of this law, the document regulations have changed significantly and now is the patient's declaration to confirm the fact of insurance. If this idea is approved, the patient will not have to show e.g. the current RMUA printout during each visit. Wiesław Latuszek, head of the publishing house Medycyna Praktyczna, emphasizes that the National He alth Fund must have some tool to control whether reimbursed drugs are prescribed correctly.
The dispute is to be resolved on December 16 at the earliest - a meeting of the Supreme Medical Council is scheduled for this day. Representatives of the Ministry of He alth are also to participate in it. The meeting with the ministry is also planned by MPs who will wonder whether the provisions on the liability of doctors should not be deleted from the reimbursement act.