Therapeutic activity – the notion, forms and rules of executing

Abstract

On July 1, 2011, the law of April 15, 2011 on therapeutic activity went into effect. It aimed at explaining and unifying the laws on therapeutic services. In order to achieve this aim, new notions were introduced such as therapeutic activity, activity in the field of therapeutic activity, health facility or non-enterprise based health facilities. These legal notions suggested by legislators are sources of doubt for numerous queries. The scope of these definitions causes many problems by their clarification. In many cases, there is so much doubt that questions about reason for the law, the coherence and the possibility of arranging legislative measures in the legal system of the Republic of Poland arise.
The way the therapeutic activity is defined is one of the reasons for the aforementioned problems with its interpretation. The lawful definition that refers to unspecific notions such as therapeutic services, promotion of health or the relevant didactic and research activities seems to be very general. Additional doubt also arises from the lawful division of the definition of therapeutic activity into regulated activity according to law of July 2, 2004 on freedom of trade and activity that is not regulated as such.
The definition of the notion of health facility calls for further consideration. The indication that health facilities drive entrepreneurs and the economy, makes it even more difficult to categorize their company status in case of a purchase. The appearing problems were additionally complicated by the legal division of non-enterprise based health facilities. The creation of such a category by legal entities with the emphasis that budgetary units and public autonomous administrative units are comprised within the area of health care does not correspond with the definition of an enterprise in Poland. Similar interpretation difficulties are caused by imprecise legal regulations. According to the definition of health facilities, partners in civil partnership and partners in general commercial partnerships and natural persons that conduct one-man business activity within their medical practice were excluded.
The mentioned doubts make it difficult to establish the personal and objective application areas of the law. That is why the law on therapeutic activity, despite the legislators’ struggle to create clear and understandable definitions, did not only fail to clear any inadequacies of previous regulations, but also magnified the existing chaos in terminology.