Poland’s health minister sparks outrage after revealing sensitive information about doctor

The Polish health minister has publicly disclosed the type of drugs a doctor prescribed to himself, after the doctor spoke up about problems with issuing prescriptions for certain types of medication following new regulations introduced by the ministry.

The social media post by Adam Niedzielski prompted anger from the medical and legal community and calls for his resignation. Meanwhile, the doctor is demanding a public apology from the minister and 100,000 zloty (€22,600) for a hospice in Poznań.

The event is the latest development in a row between the medical community and the health ministry over the changes introduced earlier this year restricting doctors’ abilities to issue digital prescriptions, in an effort to clamp down on so-called “prescription factories”.

Physicians have raised the alarm following the introduction of the new rules, saying they are not able to prescribe certain medicines to patients, including psychiatric medication and painkillers.

In an interview with the Fakty news programme on broadcaster TVN, Piotr Pisula, a doctor working at the neurosurgery department in a hospital in Poznań, spoke of the restrictions he and his colleagues face in their practice.

In response to these allegations, Niedzielski took to social media to write: “Lies by TVN’s Fakty. We heard that for the past two days, patients in Poznań had not received prescriptions for painkillers following orthopaedic operations. We checked in Poznań. And? Patients after orthopaedic operations received prescriptions for the indicated drugs.”

“Doctor Piotr Pisula, Poznan City Hospital, yesterday in TVN’s Fakty [said] ‘No patient could be given such a prescription’. We checked. The doctor issued a prescription for a psychotropic and painkiller drug to himself yesterday,” he added.

In response, the Supreme Medical Chamber (NIL), the body representing Poland’s doctors, announced it would notify the prosecutor’s office of a suspicion of the crime of “exceeding his authority” committed by the minister.

“A doctor tells the media about the problems doctors in his department have with prescribing painkillers. The health minister, who is not a doctor, retaliates by checking what medicines this doctor is prescribing and to whom, and announces this on Twitter [recently rebranded to X], breaking medical confidentiality,” said NIL on social media.

“How do you feel about a system in which the ministry publicly discloses the medical data of people who criticise its actions,” it added.

NIL’s president, Łukasz Jankowski, also informed Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, that “the medical community has lost confidence in Mr Niedzielski” rendering further cooperation with the health minister “impossible”.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Bar Council (NRA) called on the prime minister to discipline the health minister, accusing him of breaking two provisions in the Polish constitution: one referring to the right “to the legal protection of private life” and another stating that “public authorities may not acquire, collect and make available information about citizens other than that which is necessary for a democratic state governed by the rule of law”.

The head of the NRA, Przemysław Rosati, pointed out that minister Niedzielski had publicly declared the intention and purpose of the disclosure, i.e. to respond to “lies” reported in the media, but that it “does not entitle one to violate the right to privacy and goes far beyond acting within the limits of the law”.

“Polish law in such cases provides for the possibility of referring the matter to civil litigation. There is also always the possibility of taking a public stand, but without overstepping the boundaries established by the legal order that applies to everyone,” he wrote in the statement.

Pisula himself, who is a board member of NIL’s district branch, said that when he saw the health minister’s post, he “went speechless”.

He stated today that the minister’s post violated “his personal rights” and that he is demanding a public apology from the minister and 100,000 zloty for a hospice in Poznań.

Pisula also pointed out that the minister’s post “does not clarify the situation at all” as Pisula spoke out about problems with issuing prescriptions not to himself but to his patients, adding that he and other doctors “still often cannot” prescribe the medications the patients need.

Niedzielski rejected the allegations, saying that the claim that he had violated the law was “untrue”. “The communication of information to the general public about the issuance of a pro auctore prescription by a doctor was intended to counteract the unlawful publicising of false data that it was impossible to issue prescriptions for psychotropic drugs and painkillers,” said Niedzielski in a statement.

“This information, communicated on the nationwide TVN station, created unjustified fear among patients as to the impossibility of receiving the prescription due to them,” he added.

The spokesman of the health ministry, Wojciech Andrusiewicz, also supported Niedzielski’s claim, stating that “no one broke the law” and the minister’s post was a way to “fight lies” and repeatedly assured that “the ministry does not have access to either patients’ or doctors’ data”.

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Main image credit: Swedish Presidency of the Council of the EU / flickr.com ( under CC BY-ND 2.0)

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.