Poland expands e-registration to nine new specialists, recovers one million wasted appointments
From 1 August 2026, patients can book first-time visits to nine additional specialists via the Internetowe Konto Pacjenta (IKP) and the mojeIKP app, as the health ministry broadens a system that has already recovered nearly one million unused appointment slots.
What changed on 1 August
Poland's central e-registration system expanded on 1 August 2026 to cover first-time consultations with nine additional specialists. The new fields are: angiologist or vascular surgeon, infectious disease physician, endocrinologist, hepatologist, immunologist, nephrologist, neonatologist, and pulmonologist. Patients can book these appointments online through the Internetowe Konto Pacjenta (IKP) or the mojeIKP mobile app. The expansion builds on the existing system, which since 1 January 2026 has covered cardiology consultations, mammography screening, and HPV HR testing. Those three services became fully mandatory in July 2026, meaning the National Health Fund (NFZ) now reimburses only appointments entered into the central system.
How the system works
Patients use IKP or the mojeIKP app to view all available slots for a given specialist nationwide and book a first visit. Follow-up appointments are still arranged directly with the medical facility. Facilities have six months from the date specified in the regulation to adapt their systems, so during the transitional period some services in selected clinics may still operate under the old rules. People who do not use digital tools can continue to register by phone or in person at the clinic.
Patients requiring urgent medical intervention will be admitted in accordance with existing regulations, regardless of the e-registration system.
Deputy Health Minister Tomasz Maciejewski made this statement in the Sejm in response to questions from MP Norbert Pietrykowski of the Centrum party, who asked whether the e-registration and planned e-queue systems would accommodate urgent admissions. Maciejewski stressed that the queue systems concern planned care, not situations demanding immediate intervention. He added that analogous rules will apply to the e-queue, a future system intended to organize scheduled hospital admissions.
One million appointments recovered
The e-registration system has already completed 3.6 million visits, with a further 2.1 million scheduled. Maciejewski told the Sejm that the system has recovered approximately one million appointment slots that would otherwise have gone unused. About half of those recovered slots (around 500,000) were cardiology visits. The recovery mechanism works by sending SMS reminders to patients before their scheduled appointment. If a patient cannot attend, they can cancel online or via SMS, and the freed slot is immediately offered to another patient.
- Completed visits
- 3.6 millions of visits
- Scheduled visits
- 2.1 millions of visits
- Recovered slots
- 1 millions of visits
- Recovered cardiology slots
- 0.5 millions of visits
The AI voice assistant
Mati Staniszewski, co-founder of ElevenLabs (a company valued at USD 11 billion), announced on platform X that an AI-powered voice assistant will soon help patients book or reschedule doctor visits. The technology, supported by the NFZ, targets the problem of patients blocking slots without showing up.
The agent calls patients who only have a landline phone, reminds them about upcoming visits, and helps reschedule if needed. With 40 million visits a year and a no-show rate of 10-20 percent, this can significantly improve access to healthcare for people across Poland.
ElevenLabs builds models for audio, voice generation, and voice understanding. The mojeIKP app itself was launched by the e-Health Centre (Centrum e-Zdrowia) in May 2021 and is available on Google Play and the App Store. It provides notifications about doctor appointments, e-prescriptions, and referrals.
What comes next
The health ministry (Ministerstwo Zdrowia) has stated that by the end of 2027 the central e-registration system will cover around 40 types of specialist clinics. The planned e-queue system will extend the same organizational logic to hospital treatment admissions. Maciejewski told parliament that e-queue will structure the process of planned hospitalizations without restricting the ability to admit a patient immediately when medically necessary.
