Ranking of Polish private hospitals

Increasingly long waiting times for appointments with specialists, irregularities in the distribution of medicines, the chronic financial inefficiency of a major part of public health care establishments, the shockingly low wages of the medical and auxiliary personnel, and increasingly frequent instances of well-qualified medical staff taking up jobs abroad – these are only some of the items on the long list of problems faced by the Polish health service. Problems of this kind are shared by other countries as well. However, the situation in Poland is particularly difficult because Poland is one of the poorest European countries. One cannot expect any major injection of finance. As a result reform attempts are limited to the transfer of money from one pocket to another.

In this situation, the proposal to liberalise the market for medical services is raised increasingly often. At present only 500,000 of the 38 million Polish people use private medical services on a regular basis, although around 70 per cent of Poles have used such services on some occasion. Most of the non-public medical centres derive a major part of their income by selling services to the public National Health Fund (NFZ). Another important item in their revenues are receipts from monthly subscription cards purchased by companies for their employees.

On commission from the popular “Wprost” weekly, Termedia Agency prepared a ranking of private hospitals in Poland. This is a very useful source of information for prospective patients. But looking at the tables presented below, one can see that private medical centres – which offer a hope for saving the Polish health care system - provide services of very varied standards and are distributed quite randomly on the map of the country. Two conclusions can be drawn from this. Firstly, that the road to a privatised market for medical services in Poland will be long and difficult. Secondly, that another sphere of opportunities is opening up for business.

Source:By Andrzej Jodłowski, polishmarket.com.p