The National Health Fund has completed an audit at Zespół Opieki Zdrowotnej in Bolesławiec. Its financial consequences are enormous: the Fund challenged PLN 5,156,421.96, deeming this amount to have been transferred to the hospital improperly. In addition, contractual penalties of PLN 742,255.09 were imposed on the facility.
The total therefore amounts to PLN 5,898,677.05, or nearly PLN 5.9 million.
“As a result of irregularities identified in the area of outpatient specialist care, the hospital was sanctioned for improperly transferred financial resources in the amount of PLN 5,156,421.96, as well as contractual penalties amounting to PLN 742,255.09,” Paulina Deksymer of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship Branch of the NFZ told our editorial team.
The hospital has appealed the decision
Kamil Barczyk, director of Szpital św. Łukasza, told the istotne.pl editorial team that the facility has appealed the NFZ decision. This means that the Fund’s findings are being challenged by the hospital, and the proceedings have not yet been finally concluded.
At this stage, it is therefore impossible to determine what amount will ultimately be subject to repayment or what level of penalties will be upheld. However, it is a fact that NFZ auditors identified irregularities and calculated their consequences at nearly PLN 5.9 million.
The audit concerned services provided in 2024
In July, the NFZ informed us that an audit procedure was being conducted at the Bolesławiec hospital concerning the provision, reporting and settlement of selected services provided from 1 January to 31 December 2024. The audit was carried out under an agreement concerning basic hospital healthcare provision.
Ultimately, the irregularities identified by the NFZ concern outpatient specialist care, meaning services provided to patients in specialist clinics without the need for hospital admission.
In its response, the NFZ did not provide a detailed list of the challenged services. Nor did it indicate whether all the findings are directly related to the operations of MEDASK. Therefore, this cannot be conclusively determined on the basis of the Fund’s response alone.
It began with signals concerning MEDASK
For many months, the istotne.pl editorial team has been examining the relationship between the Bolesławiec hospital and MEDASK, a company linked to doctors and people employed at the facility. We published information about agreements concluded with the company, the management’s failure to provide full answers, and doubts concerning the settlement of services.
The editorial team also received reports that doctors working simultaneously for the hospital and MEDASK may have provided outpatient services at times overlapping with their other duties. These were reports requiring independent verification by institutions with access to medical records, schedules, reports and the NFZ settlement system.
The issue of companies operating at the Bolesławiec hospital had previously been the subject of questions addressed, among others, to the facility’s director, the Ministry of Health, the Supreme Medical Chamber and representatives of the government administration. istotne.pl published further reports describing the MEDASK case, the audits and the lack of full transparency regarding some agreements.
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One of the largest amounts disclosed in the facility’s history
Nearly PLN 5.9 million is incomparably more than the previous adjustments disclosed following other audits of the hospital. The contractual penalty alone exceeds PLN 742,000, while the fundamental part of the NFZ claim consists of funds that the Fund deemed to have been transferred improperly.
For comparison, this is a multiple of the annual expenditure of many units and organizations operating in Bolesławiec County. The scale of the financial findings means that the outcome of the hospital’s appeal could be highly significant for the facility’s situation.
We will ask the NFZ and the hospital management about the precise scope of the identified irregularities, the number of challenged services, the basis for calculating the individual amounts and the stage of the appeal proceedings.