On 20 June, COCIR organised an event in Warsaw, Poland to raise awareness on how to best use cohesion policy funds in healthcare in the context of the preparation of the upcoming 2014-2020 Cohesion Policy Funds programming period. The event was co-organised by COCIR, the European Hospital and Healthcare Federation (HOPE) and the Polish Hospital Association in the framework of their annual conference.  The event featured the participation of the European Commission.

The first part of the event included an update from the European Commission:
- Andor Urmos from DG REGIO, via videoconference,  gave some clarification on Structural Funds and health investments and outlined challenges and future objectives
- Maria-Jose Peiro from DG SANCO, attending the event in person, explained key reasons to invest in health and articulated the funding priorities in health.

In the second part, Polish speakers from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Regional Development, as well as from public and private hospitals and from the employers’ association, shared their views.  The event closed after an animated and interactive panel discussion with key speakers from Poland.
The event was attended by a full room of 200 participants from public and private hospitals, industry and local authorities and was live tweeted on the COCIR Twitter feed (@COCIR).

To coincide with the event, COCIR launched a Position Paper focusing on the Polish policy context and putting forward key recommendations on how to improve the programming and implementation exercise of EU funding for healthcare in Poland in 2014–2020.  At the event, we also shared the COCIR report on financial sustainability of healthcare systems, first published in March 2013.

All presentations from the event are available for download from this page under Related Documents or through the event page.