The Polish Senate has adopted amendments to the Patients’ Rights Act, introducing severe financial penalties and new enforcement powers to restrict public access to hazardous, unverified therapies. <\/p>\n
The Senate adopted amendments on Wednesday to the law on patients’ rights and the Patient Ombudsman, commonly referred to as “Lex Quack.” The new regulations are designed to limit the availability in public spaces and online of services that pose a threat to health or life and are offered without scientific medical backing.<\/p>\n
The legislation, supported by 62 senators with 6 against and 17 abstentions, grants the Patient Ombudsman the authority to issue public warnings and binding temporary decisions requiring entities to immediately halt specific practices before proceedings conclude. The Ombudsman will also gain the right to initiate and participate in civil proceedings concerning patients’ rights under the same terms as a prosecutor.<\/p>\n
Prepared by the Ministry of Health in cooperation with the Patient Ombudsman, the regulation establishes heavy financial penalties. Violating collective patients’ rights will carry fines of up to 1 million PLN, while failing to cooperate with the Ombudsman will incur fines of up to 100,000 PLN, applicable even if the activity is terminated just prior to a decision.<\/p>\n
The statute introduces a ban on pseudomedical practices, defined as health services that create a risk of bodily injury, health impairment, or death when performed by non-medical professionals, as well as offering unverified diagnostic or therapeutic methods under the guise of official healthcare. The ban specifically covers diagnostics or treatment for minors, oncological diseases, severe incurable illnesses, and mental disorders, requiring all service providers to be officially entered into the Register of Entities Performing Medical Activities.<\/p>\n
The law also addresses herbal medicine by legally separating safe, traditional phytotherapy from dangerous quackery.<\/p>\n
The regulations drew nearly 5,000 comments during public consultations from major institutions, medical councils, insurance chambers, and associations representing herbalists, acupuncturists, homeopaths, and beauty salons. The upper house’s amendments, authored by the Senate legislative office, are purely editorial and do not alter the substantive meaning of the bill, which will now return to the Sejm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Polish Senate has adopted amendments to the Patients’ Rights Act, introducing severe financial penalties and new enforcement powers to restrict public access to hazardous, unverified therapies. Senate Approves Amendments to “Lex Quack” The Senate adopted amendments on Wednesday to the law on patients’ rights and the Patient Ombudsman, commonly referred to as “Lex Quack.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}