During the January meeting of the Bolesławiec City Council, a rumor was discussed that the psychiatric hospital was to be merged with the county hospital. Mayor Piotr Roman said that several employees of the regional hospital had called him, concerned about their future and about a parliamentarian from Law and Justice becoming the hospital director. P. Roman:
The health minister has decided that a law will be prepared to nationalize hospitals in Poland.
What does this mean?
As the Mayor of the City of Ceramics explained, a team has been appointed to prepare a draft law restructuring healthcare by the end of May. “This will mean that the party in power—that is, in the near future, Law and Justice—will be responsible for the entire healthcare system in Poland,” Piotr Roman said. “And they will decide on personnel appointments.”
It is not yet known what direction the changes will take. It is possible that the county hospital will be incorporated into the regional hospital’s structures. The mayor:
We would like the county hospital to be run by the regional government rather than the state, because our experience with running hospitals in a centralized manner has been bad; we have no grounds to support measures aimed at nationalizing hospitals. I do not accept the health minister’s claim that the chaos and waste will come to an end. Just look at all the vaccination scandals—whether it was the group of artists in Warsaw or MP Girzyński elsewhere—they do not concern local-government hospitals. They concern either university or state hospitals. One can say that there is more chaos in state hospitals than in local-government hospitals.
He added that a huge positive change could be seen at the Bolesławiec ZOZ, and that Professor Simon himself had described the work of Kamil Barczyk, the director of our county hospital, during the pandemic as exemplary.
The mayor noted: “We are concerned that if nationalization occurs, even the fate of Director Barczyk may be uncertain.”
What do you think? We invite you to join the discussion. We will certainly return to the subject.