Between 2022 and June 2026, the National Health Fund inspected 66 hospital emergency departments across Poland, uncovering widespread staffing shortages, extended wait times, and procedural failures. <\/p>\n
Hospital emergency departments are fundamentally responsible for providing care to patients in sudden health emergencies. These medical services consist of an initial health assessment and subsequent treatment necessary to stabilize vital functions.<\/p>\n
According to Ministry of Health data, there are currently 251 emergency departments operating in Poland, representing an increase of one compared to 2024. In 2023, there were 246 such departments, and in 2022, 244.<\/p>\n
Between 2022 and June 2026, the National Health Fund (NFZ) conducted a total of 66 audits focusing on the functioning of emergency departments, with the highest number\u201424 audits\u2014carried out in 2024. In the first half of 2026, the NFZ has already conducted 5 such audits.<\/p>\n
In addition to the NFZ, the Ministry of Health can also commission audits. Over the same period, the ministry ordered 12 audits due to reservations regarding the operation of specific emergency departments, with the peak of 5 ministry-ordered audits occurring in 2024.<\/p>\n
Based on the response to a parliamentary interpellation by Deputy Minister of Health Katarzyna Kacperczyk, the most frequent irregularities identified during NFZ audits related to medical staffing. In 13 cases, facilities failed to meet conditions specified in applicable regulations or contracts, while in another 6 cases, they provided health care services outside of a designated scope or medical field.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, two instances were noted where medical personnel failed to provide guaranteed services during their required working hours. Irregularities identified in audits commissioned by the Ministry of Health differed, most commonly involving extended wait times for care, a lack of minimum staffing resources, and improper medical triage.<\/p>\n
Ministry-commissioned audits also revealed a lack of designated on-duty department physicians, inadequate supervision over foreign physicians from outside the European Union by doctors holding second-degree specialization or a specialist title in a given medical field, a lack of round-the-clock access to diagnostic equipment, and a failure to provide food for patients waiting in emergency departments for admission to other hospital wards.<\/p>\n
Last year, an analysis of patient movement across all national emergency departments was conducted using data from January and February 2025 collected from medical entities. According to these findings, the average total length of stay for a patient in an emergency department\u2014from taking a ticket to discharge or transfer to another ward\u2014was 4 hours and 27 minutes during the surveyed period.<\/p>\n
This applies to patients across all triage categories, including red, orange, yellow, green, and blue priorities. Patients transferred from emergency departments for further hospitalization in other wards of the same hospital accounted for an average of 22 percent of all patients admitted regardless of admission mode.<\/p>\n
Bed availability in other hospital wards for patients transferred from emergency departments nationwide averages 1.35 beds per referred patient. This indicator ranges from 0.56 beds per patient in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship to 1.99 beds per patient in the Lubusz Voivodeship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Between 2022 and June 2026, the National Health Fund inspected 66 hospital emergency departments across Poland, uncovering widespread staffing shortages, extended wait times, and procedural failures. 66 NFZ Audits in Emergency Departments Hospital emergency departments are fundamentally responsible for providing care to patients in sudden health emergencies. These medical services consist of an initial health […]<\/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":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17277","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=17277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}