Poland’s healthcare system is keeping most citizens healthy, but there are further improvements necessary for the current system to increase efficiency and reach beyond-average higher standards of health. Its healthcare may not currently live up to the standards of other western European countries, but it has the potential to improve its healthcare structure to compete with and possibly surpass them in the future, considering its relative economic stability. In pursuit of this goal, Poland is taking steps.
Healthcare System Overview
The healthcare system that Poland inherited in 1990 from the communist era (the Semashko model) offered universal coverage with a comprehensive program of healthcare benefits distributed through facilities owned and run by the state. Although the system, funded from the central budget (i.e., general tax revenues), provided universal healthcare coverage, it was overcentralized, over-specialized and did nothing to nurture cost awareness. Regional inequalities, rationing and misallocation of resources emerged, with growing unofficial payments to public healthcare providers. Increasingly, patients perceived the quality of healthcare offered by the system to be poor and a general public dissatisfaction grew.
Reforms since 1990 included the abolishment of state monopoly in the healthcare sector, the decentralization of ownership and financial and management responsibility to municipalities and regions, the development of a family-doctors model, and the creation of new payment and contracting methods. These lead to a new general obligatory social health insurance system which entered into force on 1 January 1999, marking a radical change from a centrally controlled, budget-based system to a decentralized insurance-based system….READ MORE
According to the World Health Organization, existing healthcare systems are not designed to respond to ageing and older people. There must be a fundamental shift in the w...
Poland’s healthcare system is keeping most citizens healthy, but there are further improvements necessary for the current system to increase efficiency and reach beyond-a...
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