Implementing the Regulation of the Minister of Health by Polish Emergency Departments In 2020

Abstract

Aim: The inadequate system of triage in Emergency Departments leads to the situation in which the personnel is not always able to provide care on time. A regulation determining the conditions of performing triage in Emergency Departments (paragraph 1, section 2) was issued on 27 June 2019. In order to present the level of the fulfilment of rules from the regulation and to determine the level of organization in the Polish health care, the percentage of Emergency Departments which provided the required information on their websites, was examined. Material and methods: The study was conducted in April 2020. 236 websites of hospitals with Emergency Departments were analyzed. The criteria of data retrieval were as follows: 1. The presence of the information concerning the rules of redirecting patients to Primary Health Care/After Hours Medical Centers. 2. The presence of information concerning the time an Emergency Department doctor has to inform the patient about the admission or about refusal to admit a patient. The collected data were statistically analyzed. Each Emergency Department was given the following statuses: “yes”, “no”, or “incomplete”. Results: Information concerning the 1st criterion were available in case of 59 hospitals (25%), while no such information was on the website in Opole and West Pomeranian Provinces. Information concerning the 2nd criterion was placed by 51 hospitals. In 28 cases the information was described as ”complete” and in 23 as “incomplete”. Conclusions: The majority of hospitals failed to observe the obligation to provide the information included in the Regulation.