NIK Exposes Irregularities at Southern Hospital; Trzaskowski Promises Reform

The Supreme Audit Office (NIK) has identified systemic failures at Warsaw’s Southern Hospital between 2022 and 2025, ranging from extreme staff fatigue and commercial exploitation of public resources to operational mismanagement.

Audit Findings and Staff Overwork

The NIK audit, initiated in September 2025, revealed severe organizational deficiencies. Medical staff faced extreme overwork, with one doctor logging 304.5 hours in a single month and a nurse reaching 249 hours.

Auditors warned that these working hours threaten patient safety and service quality. Furthermore, the hospital failed to meet staffing declarations made to the National Health Fund (NFZ) across surgical and internal medicine departments.

Commercial Misuse of Public Facilities

The audit highlighted the “Warsaw Spine Surgery Center,” an entity that functioned as a marketing brand despite having no formal existence within the hospital structure. Publicly funded staff, equipment, and operating rooms were utilized for commercial services, often simultaneously, with overlapping shift schedules.

Patient rooms for this commercial unit were found to be poorly equipped, lacking basic sanitary facilities like sinks, while containing furniture and kitchenettes that rendered the space inefficient for medical use.

Emergency Department and Operational Failures

Inspectors criticized the hospital’s Emergency Department (SOR) for performing elective, non-urgent surgeries, a practice that risks compromising the facility’s primary mission of handling life-threatening emergencies.

Official Responses and Investigations

Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski stated that the city is analyzing the report and will draw necessary conclusions, noting that new management has already been appointed to address these systemic issues. Health Minister Jolanta Sobierańska-Grenda maintained that remediation is the responsibility of the hospital’s owners and supervisory board.

The facility is currently under multiple investigations by the NFZ, the Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA), and the Regional Prosecutor’s Office. These inquiries cover allegations of fraud, abuse of power, and suspicious patient deaths.