Functioning of care-and-treatment health centers and nursing-and-care health centers illustrated by the Province of Lublin.
A commonly felt problem in the Polish system of health protection is the lack of long-term care in the properly functioning family. With the introduction of a new system of health insurance, chronically ill patients with an established diagnosis and therapy and not requiring hospitalization are considered not eligible for hospital care. It concerns a big group of patients with a considerable limitation of self-caring activities. The demographic data imply that this problem is growing systematically. A bigger and bigger part of the society is at their post-production age in which many diseases limiting independent functioning develop. Problems arising from the disease influence not only the family but also the whole society. In many cases a chronic disease leads to disability, which results in the requirement for nursing care. Year by year there is an increasing number of people requiring everyday at least 2-hour nursing care. A considerable number of these patients qualify for stationary long-term care. There is a great deficit of services in the long-term care at present. New principles of financing health services force the health care settings to use the beds in the optimum way, to make a quick diagnosis and treatment without extending the patient's stay in hospital by a period that would not influence the change of health condition. Therefore, long-term care should comprise about 60% of the whole potential of stationary care. In our country the deficit of stationary forms of long-term care is felt. It creates the opportunity for many hospitals providing the short-term care to transform to treatment-care settings or nursing-and-care settings which will be performing longterm care.
Interfaculty Chair and Department of Public Health, Medical University of Lublin, Lublin Regional Health Maintenance Organization, Lublin, Poland.
Teresa Bernadetta
TB
Kulik
Violetta
V
Siwińska
Ewa
E
Rudnicka-Drozak
D000368:Aged; D018166:Health Care Reform / Q000458:organization & administration; D006299:Health Services for the Aged / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards*; D006707:Homes for the Aged; D006801:Humans; D008134:Long-Term Care; D009735:Nursing Homes; D011044:Poland