Web-economic-crisis-health-systems-and-health-web

Poland
Adam Kozierkiewicz and Christoph Sowada
Economic trends
• Poland's real per capita GDP growth slowed in 2009, but the economy
did not experience a contraction comparable to other European countries
and GDP growth picked up again in 2010.
• Unemployment rates did increase in 2009 to 11.9% and did not decline
through 2011.
• Poland's health spending as a share of government expenditure is low
compared with the European region. Per capita public expenditure
on health slowed in 2010 but growth remained positive, while OOP
expenditure declined slightly, by 1.9% (Poland: Figs 1 and 2).
Policy responses
Changes to public funding for the health system
• Central government health spending remained stable between 2009 and
2013; local government health (investment) spending rose because of
significant investment financed through EU funds.
• Between 2008 and 2013, SHI expenditure grew at a slower rate than in
previous years because of lower GDP growth and so lower SHI revenues.
Changes to health coverage
Population (entitlement)
• No response reported.
The benefits package
• A new drug reimbursement law (2011) introduced a more transparent system
for making reimbursement decisions, with the option of individual risksharing
agreements based on the drug's effectiveness, turnover or discounts.
• The number of covered drugs (including the same drug in various forms,
old drugs) was reduced from 2112 to 732 between December 2011 and
December 2012.
• Positive drug lists are now updated every two months to improve availability (2011).
• Providers must verify (using an electronic database) if patients are entitled to
reimbursement before prescribing reimbursable drugs (2012, 2013).