Will There Be Another Department at the County Hospital? “It’s Confidential”

During the January session of the Bolesławiec County Council, starosta Karol Stasik informed councillors that he had attended a meeting with Adam Zdaniuk, head of the county hospital in Bolesławiec, and Andrzej Oćwieja, director of the Lower Silesian branch of the NFZ. The starosta noted that the county facility would like to open another department with Level II reference status. (Our ZOZ is currently classified as a Level I facility. To obtain a higher reference level, it was necessary to have three Level II departments; the Bolesławiec hospital has two: orthopaedics and neurology.)

“It’s confidential because other hospitals will also be seeking this,” Karol Stasik said during the January Council session. The point, the starosta explained, is that if the National Health Fund determines that there is a shortage of services in a particular region, it will announce a tender for them. The Bolesławiec ZOZ will want to enter that tender and win it.

We will certainly return to this subject.

Let us recall. In June, we reported that the Bolesławiec county hospital had been classified as a Level I facility. However, ZOZ director Adam Zdaniuk announced that the hospital would fight for Level II reference status. The facility submitted a protest to the Lower Silesian NFZ branch. The office in our province received the largest number of protests in the country—22 in total. The NFZ rejected 18 of them in full, including our hospital’s protest.

Joanna Mierzwińska, spokesperson for the Lower Silesian branch of the National Health Fund, explained that the Bolesławiec hospital did not meet the requirements for a Level II facility. “We could not accept this protest,” she explained to istotne.pl. “The ZOZ was missing one specialist department. The regulations precisely specify the requirements that must be met to be classified as a hospital with Level II reference status.”

The fact that the Bolesławiec ZOZ will continue to be classified as a Level I facility does not mean that it will receive less money from the Fund. The NFZ included the four departments that exceed Level I. The status quo has been maintained. The facility has a guaranteed contract with the Fund for four years.