The first available appointment at the Municipal Medical Rehabilitation Centre can only be booked for 11 June next year! Even longer queues await patients at the Biomed Specialist Centre – there, the first available date is 1 June 2027, while at NZOZ PROVITA it is 15 September 2027. This means waiting from a year and a half to more than two and a half years for basic rehabilitation.

How is someone supposed to receive treatment when the necessary therapy is only available after such a long time? The most upsetting thing is that a private appointment can be arranged at some practices within just a week. This raises the question: why does the NFZ not pay adequately? Are the rates offered to physiotherapists by the National Health Fund so low that few facilities can provide a sufficient number of specialists under their contracts? Or does the problem lie elsewhere: a shortage of qualified staff, poor organisation, or overly lengthy billing procedures?

The fact is that more and more patients are complaining about being unable to start essential rehabilitation quickly. This often concerns returning to fitness after injuries, accidents or orthopaedic surgeries, when time is crucial. Waiting a year and a half for treatment means that many people give up on care covered by the NFZ and, if they can afford it financially, choose private practices instead – there is no months-long queue there, and treatment can begin immediately.

It is worth asking whether this trend is not leading to the exclusion of people who cannot afford private appointments. For many patients with chronic conditions, rehabilitation is not a luxury but a necessity. Leaving them in such a long queue leads, on the one hand, to deteriorating health and, on the other, to rising treatment costs in the future, as neglected conditions may require more advanced and expensive care.

Small NFZ contracts, low valuations for individual procedures, staff shortages, or perhaps an insufficient number of centres? The causes are complex and usually cannot be reduced to just one factor. However, changes to the system require specific solutions at the central level so that patients in Bolesławiec and other Polish cities do not have to wait years for rehabilitation that is crucial to their health.

What solutions are possible?

  • Increased NFZ funding: higher rates for procedures could encourage more physiotherapists to sign contracts, which would shorten queues.
  • Increasing the number of specialists: support for training new physiotherapists and creating incentives to work in smaller towns.
  • Better system organisation: reducing bureaucracy, simplifying procedures and enabling broader use of new technologies, such as telemedicine, in the rehabilitation process.

For now, however, patients must reckon with the fact that before they receive physiotherapy covered by the NFZ in Bolesławiec, a dozen or even several dozen months may pass. Will their health allow them to live and work normally during this time? Much indicates that without systemic changes, the answer may be negative for a significant proportion of patients.