“It was supposed to be liquidated, put aside, during the Civic Platform years,” the Prime Minister says about the hospital in Pionki. Only that the facility was to be connected with the district hospital in Iłża and it was not during the PO era, but PiS.
The district hospital in Pionki, after reconstruction and modernization, was officially opened by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. – Everything was to be forgotten, everything was to be liquidated, there was a risk of complete collapse, collapse – said the head of government.
When was the hospital in Pionki threatened with this “complete collapse”, this “collapse”? The Prime Minister replies: – It was supposed to be liquidated, put aside, it was supposed to practically cease to exist during the years of the Civic Platform. It was supposed to be connected to something somewhere, argued the head of government.
The problem is that only the end of the sentence is true, because the district hospital in Pionki was to be merged with the district hospital in Iłża, which results from the draft resolution of the Radom County Council on this matter from 2017. At that time, Poland was not governed by the Civic Platform, but by PiS.
Hospitals in the Radom district were to be merged, forced to do so by PiS, which was then introducing the so-called hospital network. Hospitals that did not meet the criteria could not count on entering the network and, consequently, on financial survival.
– The hospital in Pionki did not actually have an emergency room, which required it to be part of a hospital network. There was also a problem with the functioning of the surgery department – explains Mirosław Ślifirczyk, former staroste of Radom, candidate for the Third Way MP. – The district board was very determined that both hospitals would exist and there was no question that there was such a will. Merging hospitals is one of the measures to maintain the functioning of hospitals – adds Ślifirczyk.
The Prime Minister boasts about how much money was spent on health care, but there are no contracts with the National Health Fund in the provincesMarek Nowicki/Fakty TVN
What does the merger of hospitals mean?
The authorities of Chorzów, for the same reason and at the same time – forced by the PiS reform – merged two of their hospitals into one. Jerzy Szafranowicz, director of the Municipal Hospital Complex in Chorzów, assures that the merger did not mean the liquidation of any of the facilities.
– On the contrary, we have opened branches here. We try to treat both hospitals as one hospital, we invest equal amounts of money – emphasizes Szafranowicz.
The 2017 reform introducing a hospital network was so unsuccessful that PiS announced a new hospital reform in 2021, which it has not yet implemented. The Supreme Medical Council has just published the hospital diagnosis 2023. It shows that nearly three-quarters of doctors are considering leaving the hospital system.
Main photo source: Fakty TVN