"Pseudo-medical professionals should be held criminally liable." The Supreme Medical Council believes that the government's reform is too weak

Pseudo-medical practices would be effectively curbed by introducing criminal liability for persons participating in their performance, believes the Supreme Medical Council.

In its Friday position, the NRL supported the direction of changes in the draft amendment to the Act of the Ministry of Health on Patients’ Rights and the Patients’ Rights Ombudsman and the Act on the Emergency Notification System.

The Ministry of Health project defines pseudo-medical practices and prohibits their performance as highly harmful to health. The project expands the powers of the Patient Rights Ombudsman, who will be able to recognize a practice as pseudo-medical, order its cessation and impose a financial penalty for such activity.

The NRL's reservations concern the fact that the project only provides for an administrative-legal model of combating pseudo-medical practices. In the opinion of the medical self-government, the only measure that could realistically curb these practices would be to introduce criminal liability for people who participate in their performance. As the NRL emphasizes, especially when such a practice aims to or leads to the patient resigning from treatment consistent with current medical knowledge or not undertaking treatment.

The medical self-government noted that in the case of criminal liability, it would be permanently imposed on the person who provided such services. The position stated that in the case of administrative proceedings conducted by the RPP, the commercial law entity will be able to liquidate its activity, and in its place a new entity will formally be established, which will continue its activity.

The draft bill submitted to the Ministry of Health for consultation in June assumes that pseudo-medical practices will be prohibited as activities highly harmful to health, and the Patients' Rights Ombudsman will be able to impose a fine of up to PLN 1 million in proceedings in such cases.

Pseudo-medical practices will be distinguished from practices violating patients' collective rights. This would include, among others, the provision of services by a person who does not practice a medical profession, offering or using methods to which the properties of a health service are attributed, leading to deterioration of health, failure to undertake or withdrawal from treatment or diagnostics. Medical disinformation would also be a pseudo-medical practice if it were associated with obtaining financial and personal benefits from it. (PAP)

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