Ambiguous law misleads pharmacies

Many pharmacies have discontinued special offers on sales of reimbursement pharmaceuticals, due to the ambiguity of an amendment to legal regulations on healthcare services financed from public funds. Some, however, have continued to sell medications on previous terms.

According to the amendment, accepting unjustified “benefits in kind” (which, for instance, increase sales of reimbursed medicaments) can constitute grounds for even five years’ imprisonment. The new law is, however, very vague, from the perspective of both pharmacists and inspectors, and is open to varying interpretations of the rules. Moreover, lawyers are divided as to what “unjustified benefits in kind” exactly means. Some of them claims that it refers only to individual patients and corrupt activities (e.g. bribing pharmacists), but others maintain that selling medications for one grosz (the smallest Polish unit of currency) can be classified as “unjustified benefits in kind”, as customers buy pharmaceuticals at a large discount, but through reimbursement the National Health Fund (NFZ) pays extra for them.