The rates for family and ambulatory doctors remain at the same level until the end of the year, confirmed the College of Doctors in Romania. This after at the beginning of the year CNAS had proposed to reduce them by percentages between 22.5% and 35.8%.
The rates of family doctors will not be reduced, announces CMR – Photo Archive
For the first half of the year, the Government had approved a normative act by which these tariffs were maintained at the level of 2023, but did not provide clarification for the second half.
The National Health Insurance Company (CNAS) initially proposed significant reductions, but in April, the Minister of Finance confirmed the maintenance of tariffs until the end of the year, with the allocation of 2.1 billion lei from the budget. The decision was recently confirmed by the College of Physicians in Romania (CMR), after negotiations with CNAS regarding the framework contract and its application rules, according to the cited source.
During the negotiation meeting on Monday, May 13, between CNAS and CMR, the College announced that it will soon complete the necessary formalities for the conclusion of the negotiation procedure, formalities that include recording the discussions and any additional clarifications.
Concretely, it was agreed “maintaining the value of the point for family medicine and specialist outpatients, until the end of 2024“, announced the College of Doctors, in a statement.
In 2024, in primary medicine, the point per capita remains at 12 lei, and the point per medical service at 8 lei. In specialized ambulatory medical assistance, the point per medical service remains at 4.5 lei.
The participants decided to continue the activity of the CMR-CNAS technical working groups for all fields, actively involving the medical body from various specialties and segments of the medical system.
“CMR will continue the inter-institutional collaboration effort necessary to support CNAS and all other state institutions, with roles and responsibilities in analyzing and solving the problems generated by the financing mechanisms, which cause both inequities for medical service providers and problems of access of the Romanian population to medical services”, the College of Doctors also said.
Discounts that sparked the revolt
At the beginning of the year, the CNAS proposed new values for points per capita and per service in family and ambulatory medicine, based on the state budget for 2024. Since the amount allocated was considerably less than the previous year, there were concerns about the reduction tariffs.
The CNAS proposal would have reduced the value of the point per capita for primary medicine to 7.7 lei and per service to 6.2 lei in 2024, compared to 12 lei and 8 lei in 2023, respectively. This would have meant a decrease of 35, 8% and 22.5% respectively. For specialized ambulatory medical assistance, the value of the point per service would have decreased by 26.7%, from 4.5 lei in 2023 to 3.3 lei in 2024. The College of Physicians estimated that the implementation of the proposal would have reduced the actual funding by 30 % for family medicine, with 27% for the specialized outpatient clinic and with 50% for dental services.
Family doctors across the country protested after the budget cuts were announced. Some of them even said that they would not renew their contract with CNAS, which meant that patients would have to pay for medical services. and the Romanian College of Physicians (CMR) requested, at that time, the withdrawal of the projects put into public debate by the CNAS regarding the value of points per service in specialized ambulatory medical assistance.
In January 2024, a government ruling kept medical rates at the 2023 level for the first semester. No solution was offered for the second half of the year, but the need to streamline the spending of funds to support specialist ambulatory care was highlighted.
