[New principles of reporting in occupational health services--bureaucracy or an effective marker instruments?]

A several-year process of transformation in occupational health services (OHS) was concluded with the Occupational Health Services Act adopted by Polish Parliament on 27 June 1997. By the time the Act came into effect, a whole series of executive regulations had been lain down. The Act like its executive regulations came into force on 1 January 1998. In view of the new Act, the system of reporting on the OHS activities and resources became inadequate and did not correspond with the reality. To this end, there was a great need to develop new principles of the reporting system as well as new reporting forms which could replace those binding thus far, and satisfy new requirements arising from modified organizational schemes and responsibilities. The work began in the Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine in 1995. Then the first drafted forms for annual reports on prevention carried out by occupational doctors and voivodship OHS centres were presented. In the new system, occupational doctors responsible for prevention, and not health care centres, are committed to present reports. So that, together with the competence the reporting responsibility is placed on a given person and not on an institution. A practising occupational doctor can be a primary OHS units, and at the same time he/she can practice in occupational health centre providing preventive care of workers, according to the provisions of the Act, within his/her responsibilities. Both report forms, part one and part two, are supplied with detailed instructions how they should be completed. The pattern and context of the forms as well as instructions have been agreed upon with the executives, specialistic supervision and the National Center for Health System Management in Warsaw.