Step 3 of 13
Referral
Every procedure requires a referral. There is no point in arranging the procedure privately: the NFZ (the Polish National Health Fund) covers the cost of these procedures, and they are so readily available that it is hard to imagine a queue of people waiting for one. At the Institute of Hematology and Transfusion Medicine (IHiT) I try to keep the waiting time to no more than 1–2 days, and sometimes, when a patient comes to Warsaw from far away and would find it hard to come again, we implant the port an hour or two later. The patient only has to have fasted for 4 hours.
If you know when your oncology consultation is, you can even phone me and book a place in the operating schedule.
If you do not have a referral, I can issue one. There is no point in making you see another doctor; let us spare the oncologists these small formalities. I will need the patient’s PESEL number and the main diagnosis for which the treatment will be given, either in words, e.g. stomach cancer, or as an ICD-10 code, e.g. C16.
Once the referral has been issued, you will receive a confirmation in your Internet Patient Account (IKP), but in any case I send you a photo of the referral with its access code, which you give at the IHiT Admissions Room on the day of admission.
If you have a printed referral, please check that it shows the PESEL number. If it does not, please write it on the referral and then send a photo of the referral to my phone number (503 119 105), or photos of both sides if there is also information on the back. The photo must show the whole page of the referral. Handwritten additions do not affect the referral’s validity.
If the photos are clear and contain the necessary data, I send a text message back saying that they are legible. If there is a formal problem, e.g. the referral is made out to a department that does not exist at IHiT (such as general surgery), I issue a new referral to the right department and, as I wrote above, send you a photo of it with the access code, which you give at the IHiT Admissions Room on the day of admission.