The head of the county ZOZ Adam Zdaniuk, spoke, among other things, about the facility being in good condition. (He mentioned that the hospital ranked fourth in Poland in a ranking prepared by Magellan and Deloitte Polska; we wrote about it in the article County hospital ranks fourth in Poland in the “Dziennik. Gazeta Prawna” ranking.)
Jesteś zadowolona/zadowolony z obsługi na SOR-ze?
There were, however, no shortage of critical comments. County Council Chairman Karol Stasik:
Is it possible for patient interviews in the ER to be conducted in some room rather than at the window, where a woman sits and asks various questions in front of everyone else waiting, sometimes intimate ones, while people, blushing, answer because they have no other choice?
Jan Russ, Law and Justice councillor:
A person reporting with an emergency, for example a sprained ankle, had to stay in the department for seven hours before receiving treatment. Will this improve?
These questions were answered by Nikolai Lambrinow, director of medical services at the Bolesławiec Healthcare Complex:
The ER was established not as a multispecialty outpatient clinic, but as a department intended to provide initial treatment and diagnostics for patients whose life or health is at risk. It may happen that someone with a minor injury waits 12 hours; that is normal practice worldwide. Priority is given to those who require it, and it is not the order in which people arrive that determines this, but the assessment of the staff responsible for treating them.
More than 7,500 people are hospitalized in the ER annually. That is an average of around 20 people a day, distributed unevenly throughout the day. It is not the case that one person arrives every hour. There are days when everyone is treated immediately, but there are also days when some people have to wait. This applies especially to a sprained ankle, which can easily be treated the following day at a surgical outpatient clinic, without harm to the patient’s health, of course. I would also add that a very large proportion of people come to the ER with symptoms that have lasted three to five days.
The deputy head of the hospital also addressed Karol Stasik’s remarks:
The open reception and open triage project was developed in consultation with the then provincial consultant and renowned national consultant, Prof. Juliusz Jakubaszko. It was his explicit wish. The aim was to ensure transparency in the staff’s actions.
This cannot be done in a room. Some people are waiting, and those people must be under some kind of supervision. They cannot sit in a closed corridor and simply enter a room, say they have arrived, and leave. That is impossible.
He immediately added, however, that the hospital authorities would try to improve the conditions in which patient interviews take place. This part of the ER is to be renovated, provided funding can be found for the project.
– The directors’ words worried me: that seven hours of waiting was not enough and that it could even be 12. I understand that it was not a serious injury. But this was a person who had been in an accident and was alone. During those seven hours, going anywhere on one leg, even to the toilet, is a problem – J. Russ replied. He added: – Now I understand why there are rumors that patients are not particularly keen on our hospital.
N. Lambrinow said that the figure of 15,000 patients a year indicated something else. He described the situation on Wednesday, March 30. At around 9:00 a.m. there was a collision, and five injured people were brought in. Then, at 11:00, there were two collisions on the motorway. And... another three patients arrived.
– There is no technical possibility of telling these people: you will have to wait because you have an ankle injury – explained the director of medical services. – Please see what it is like in other ERs. Some people only discover how good things are elsewhere when they go there. For example, go to the hospital on Borowska Street in Wrocław and see that you are 58th in line. And nobody makes an issue of it. Or go abroad and try to get emergency treatment there with an ankle injury.
– There are situations – N. Lambrinow continued – when a person requiring resuscitation is brought in. I can assess that for 2.5 hours I will not be able to admit anyone else, certainly not someone with a condition that is not life-threatening.
ZOZ representatives explained that the ER has three admission zones. Patients in the waiting room see only one of them, the green zone, for people who are walking, conscious, and have minor ailments and injuries; they do not see the observation and resuscitation areas.
Bolesławiec Land councillor Antoni Stec joined the discussion and said that he had reported to our hospital with suspected myocardial infarction but had not been admitted. – I was fortunate to be taken to Zgorzelec – he noted.
Nikolai Lambrinow promised to investigate. He stressed: – It personally worries me, both as the head and as a doctor, that for nine years it has been difficult to hear anything positive about your hospital in this room. Because it is your hospital, not mine. I hear people in this room saying that the surrounding hospitals are excellent. We admitted 7,500 people. If you think that nobody made a single mistake, that is incorrect thinking; mistakes have occurred and will occur everywhere. I would also like certain positives to be noticed. The fact that we do not say on television every week that we have saved five, six, eight or ten people is natural, because that is what our work consists of.
County Governor Dariusz Kwaśniewski:
You have to be in one hospital, then another, then a third, to understand where things are good and where they are bad. In recent months, I have been to various hospitals several times, starting with ours. And I was genuinely satisfied. Then, however, it turned out that I should go to another hospital offering services that ours does not. After a week, it turned out that the doctors in Zgorzelec said: we cannot help you. And I ended up at a clinic, a university hospital. That is how this pyramid works.
Can we compare ourselves with Zgorzelec? Unfortunately, no, but that does not reflect badly on us at all. Our contract is just under PLN 40 million; theirs is PLN 106 million. They are a somewhat different hospital, with cardiology and cardiac surgery, so I am not surprised that Mr. Antoni was taken there.
Let us complete the medical services map, with everyone specializing in their own area. And the fact that our directors managed to create a neurology subunit is certainly something to celebrate.
Karol Stasik summed up the discussion, recalling that the hospital’s debt currently stands at PLN 5.8 million, whereas at one point it exceeded PLN 40 million. He added: – I am trying to reconcile both sides: the hospital has significantly improved the scope of its services and the way they are provided, and it is also on the right path to eliminating its debt. There will always be someone who is dissatisfied, but I believe this hospital management deserves praise.
What do you think about all this? We invite you to join the discussion and take part in our poll.