Polish health service needs the kiss of life

Or something even more intimate. The Polish government have decided to have a ‘White Summit’ where government, president, medical profession and unions all get round a table and talk about stuff.

The health service is short of doctors, who, like nurses, earn a pittance. Strikes and threats of strikes are the norm. Some of the often crumbling hospitals are a health risk to anyone unlucky enough to be sick in one of them. The sector needs some radical surgery and intensive care. The government may have to administer some bitter pills (and other pharmaceutical metaphors). It needs the kiss of life, but all the health service gets is a talking shop and another opportunity for Tusk and President Kaczynski to get at each other’s throats. It’s another case of this government looking like it really hasn’t a clue what to do. So better set up a commission, a round table, a summit. I think they are just passing the buck.

Personally, I go private

Usually. Today, however, I had to go to the state works doctor to get a sick note and medicine for my chest infection. When I turned up and said to the nurse, whose head appeared through a square hole in the middle of a wall, that I needed to be seen, the doctor – a miserable, toad-like individual – initially didn’t want to see me. I think I was keeping him from his private clinic duty – the only way a doctor can stay in the profession is to do private work.

“But I have a contract with this organization, I pay social insurance and I am sick. I want to see a doctor. Oh, and I want some antibiotics, too.”

I always self diagnose. It seems to annoy doctors – which is fun.

Grudgingly, he relented: “Get his card and tell him to wait,” I heard him tell nursey.

So I waited. And then, I waited a bit more. I read some of the drug company flyers hanging around the place. And then I did some more waiting. I paced around the little waiting room, all the while waiting some more. I went outside the waiting room and down the corridor - but even there, I was still waiting.

I went back to the hole in the wall, just to give me something to do while I waited. The nurse hadn’t even bothered to get my ‘card’ yet.

“Can I have my card”?

No I couldn’t, because I didn’t have a card, because I had never been to see the doctor there before.

“And you can’t see the doctor without a card.”

“So could we…make a card?”

She got out a card. “Pesel?” It's a number and I don't actually know it.

“If you don’t have a number then you can’t have a card. And if you don’t have a card then you can’t see the doctor,” she said triumphantly.

I completely lost my temper - I am sick, after all - and ripped up the half filled out ‘card’ (very dramatically) and stormed out the door.

What have you gotta do in this place to get to see a doctor? So I went private.

In the LIM clinic in the centre of Warsaw, about seven rather nicely dressed receptionists are waiting to help with every need, as long as it is medical. They fill out the cards for you as if they were honoured to have the opportunity. They smile and talk about the weather. They then assign you a doctor. They give you a clinic number and say: “Room 9 and that will be 80 zloty, please.”

I waited outside No.9 for five minutes, sitting next to a man whose heal on his foot appeared to be pointing forwards, with his toes pointing backwards. Nasty. And then the doctor called me in.

She was nice but did what all Polish doctors do. They diagnose you, and then they write out a list of medicines and supplements as long as the Magna Carta. And the cost of the anti-biotics (yup, I got them) plus nose decongestant, chest decongestant, calcium (they always prescribe calcium for everything) something to counteract the effects on the stomach of the anti-biotics you are taking, anti-cold remedy….comes to the total planned Polish health service expenditure for 2008.

Are doctors on the make with drug companies, or what?

I would like to go to only state doctors in a state health service. But until they get serious, fund the thing properly, get rid of the inefficiency and corruption, I’m going private.