II Termedia Congress: Vision of Health - Diagnosis and Future. Medical Foresight

For the second time Termedia organized its congress "Vision of Health - Diagnosis and Future. Medical Foresight ", which this time took place on October 2, 2018 in Warsaw. The conference brought together doctors, policy makers, media and other people interested in the development of health care in Poland.

One of the interesting sessions that took place during the congress was the one organized by the American Heart of Poland entitled "Heart failure - to prevent or cure? Clinical and economic aspects." The session, led by Marta Koblańska, was attended by Marcin Pakulski (Former President of the National Health Fund), health expert) Piotr Winciunas (medical inspector, medical supervision, social security) prof. Adam Witkowski (President of the Polish Society of Cardiology) and Aleksander Żurakowski PhD (President of the Professional Association of Interventional Cardiologists) and Andrzej Jacyna (The President of the National Health Fund).

Panelists have noticed the progressive aging process of the Polish society means that the number of sick people is increasing, among which persons suffering from cardiovascular diseases begin to dominate, including heart failure, which every year gathers more and more in our society, taking epidemic proportions. Despite increasing expenditures on treatment, pensioners and people receiving sickness benefits are more and more, hospitals are getting more and more in debt, and staff are on strike - the system is becoming more and more ineffective, which shows the drop in Poland's position in the ranking of efficiency of healthcare prepared annually by Bloomberg agency. Panelists emphasized that about 5,500 people of working age, or between 24 and 60 years of age, die from heart failure in Poland. The increasing mortality of patients coincided with a powerful reform of the health care system in Poland, which consisted in creating a network of hospitals in Poland, limiting the number of revascularizations performed or reducing the valuation of interventional cardiology services. It caused, among others limiting the number of interventional procedures - both the number of coronarography - by 23,000, and angioplasty - decreased by 10,000.

Eleven Zett Productions provided media support for the session, including the preparation of an article about heart failure, widely distributed in the media.