Poland struggles to keep indebted hospitals afloat

WARSAW, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Poland announced a plan on Friday to save its health sector from bankruptcy after a dramatic appeal by parents of sick children at a hospital that may be forced to close its doors. Up to 30 Polish hospitals are in danger of closure, Polish media say, after a court ruled this week that lenders could sue hospitals to collect 100 percent of their debts. The healthcare sector in ex-communist Poland is saddled with 6 billion zlotys ($2 billion) in debt. The ruling conservatives promised in 2006 to overhaul the sector to make it solvent. But little has been changed so far. "The government will present a programme to convert the debt of hospitals of strategic importance from short-term to long-term," Health Minister Zbigniew Religa said. Religa told a news conference he would present details of the government's debt restructuring plan next week and it would be "implemented at lightning speed". A major hospital in Wroclaw, Poland's fourth largest city, lost its main source of cash this week after its creditors began seizing money earmarked for the hospital by a state health fund. Parents of children treated by the hospital for cancer appeared on TV for the second day in a row on Friday. One of them accused the state and creditors of dooming their children to a slow death, Dziennik daily reported. "Creditors have passed a death sentence on our children," said Wioletta Wojcik, whose seven-year-old daughter has leukaemia. "I beg the government to do something." The hospital's director later said he had enough reserve funds for eight more weeks and that no sick children would be turned away, PAP news agency reported. Poland's opposition parties have called Religa's debt plan a quick fix and urged the government to introduce a free market into the sector, which is state-run, in order to make it viable. Poland spent 8.7 billion euros ($11.33 billion) on healthcare in 2004, or 4.3 percent of GDP, the sixth lowest level in the European Union, according to EU data. Poland spends about an eighth as much on health care as Spain, which has roughly the same population.
Source: By Marynia Kruk, alertnet.org