Directory of European Resources > Eurocleft Clinical Network > Registered Clinical Teams > Poland

Clinical Teams in POLAND

Bydgoszcz	Polanica Zdroj	Warsawa (Medical Academy)
Gdansk	Szczecin	Warsawa (Medical Centre of Postgraduate Education)
Lódz	Warsawa (Centre for Craniofacial Disorders)	Zabrze

Population
Approximately 38.6 million.

Health Service
Health care services in Poland are now divided into the large publicly financed sector and the small privately financed sector. Due to the insufficiency of the state budget, new methods of supporting health care have been developed. Health care institutions often open bank accounts to collect money from fund raising events and obtain sponsorship from business as well as donations from patients and their families.

The cost of treating a patient is borne by that patient’s local authority or commune irrespective of where the patient is treated. Responsibility for state health centres has been gradually transferred to the communes since 1992 with each having a list of patients who will then have a free choice of physician. Some services will be financed from the state budget with others paid for by the patient or their insurance companies. Free-market competition is to occur between the services of the public and private sectors with physicians being paid through a mixture of fee-for service and tax-per-head systems. Physicians are permitted to work in private medical practice outside of their normal working hours. In most regions, emergency services, clinics and hospitals have become independently managed institutions but the objective is that they should become part of the infrastructure of the commune controlled by the local authorities.

Cleft Care Organisation
Poland sees around 700* new born babies with clefts of the lip and/or palate each year. The Multidisciplinary Cleft Lip and Palate Childcare Programme was established in the year 2000. It provides surgical and orthodontic treatment to patients with complete clefts of the lip palate up to the age of 18. As yet, speech treatment is not included in this programme. 10 surgical/orthodontic centres were involved in the programme in the years 2001-2002 and participated in meetings to standardise surgical and orthodontic procedures and analyse the results of treatment for all accredited centres. Since January 2003 the Ministry of Health has stopped financing this cleft programme and all financing is now provided by the National Health Fund. Under the programme primary surgery is provided for all children, but unfortunately about 40% of patients with clefts are being treated in centres that are not accredited. In 2002 an information booklet for parents was prepared and published.

Challenges to Attaining the Eurocleft Consensus Recommendations
The Eurocleft Consensus Recommendations cannot be met without the provision of speech treatment and when many patients are treated in non-accredited centres.

As yet there has been no participation in intercentre studies or clinical trials.

Future Plans
At present there are no “future plans” but efforts to implement the Multidisciplinary Cleft Lip and Palate Childcare Programme will be continued.

* Number of clefts per annum reported by national representative for Poland