… but still Poland is lagging behind.
Experts from the OECD and the Observatory prepared a set of 30 Country Health Profiles, covering all EU Member States, as well as Iceland and Norway.1 Since 2000, life expectancy at birth has increased by four years in Poland, but remains three years below the EU average. According to the Report State of Health in the EU 2019, the Polish population has one of the lowest life expectancies in Europe. It is just 77.8 years comparing to the EU average of 80.9 years. No surprisingly that fewer Poles report being in good health compared to other EU countries. In 2017, only of 59 % Polish population reported perceiving themselves to be in good health, compared with two thirds for the EU as a whole.
A weak effectiveness of health system is one of many reasons for it. Poland’s health system is mainly based on the state Social Health Insurance with the Ministry of Health and local governments supervising health care services. There are some private hospitals, but their share of patients beds was just 5% in 2015. Although private hospitals tend to be more effective than public ones, their profitability depends deeply on public contracts.2 Unfortunately the public share of health care spending in Poland, both as a share of GDP and in per capita terms, is one of the lowest in Europe. This low level of funding is insufficient to provide timely access to high-quality care, particularly given rising health care needs due to population aging. In consequence the level of unmet medical care needs in Poland is higher than the EU average, as Poland faces an acute shortage of health professionals.
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1 More information at: https://ec.europa.eu/health/state/country_profiles_en
2 More information at: http://www.szpitale.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Zeszyt_statysstyczny.pdf