Nurses in Poland strike because they demand wage increases. Doctors strike because they want more money and market economy in the health sector. The government is against. It probably has not heard about the hospital in Zamosc. Three years ago, the hospital had PLN 25m (EUR 6.6m) of debts. Debt collector took over the hospital’s accounts. Medicines were borrowed from drugstores. Now, the company is doing quite well. In 2005, it had PLN 1.6m of net income, a year later PLN 1.1m but only because PLN 1.3m was spent to modernize the hospital and PLN 1m for additional wages for the employees.
How is it possible?
“The town council decided to close indebted hospital, take over its debts and found a new company”, Krzysztof Tuczapski, the CEO of the hospital and at the same time the deputy CEO of the nationwide association of non-public hospitals, said.
He has traveled all over Poland in recent months encouraging local authorities to follow the suit of Zamosc. It takes a year to transform a public hospital into a private one. It takes another year for the company to get out of the read. There are about 50 hospitals owned by local authorities in Poland. None of them has financial problems.
The association of private hospitals would like the government to let them receive funds from the National Health Fund. The government hesitates. Pawel Trzcinski, the spokesman of the Ministry of Health, warns that it is a good solution only if local authorities can afford to acquire hospital’s debts.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.264)