The new Minister of Health, Alexandru Rogobete, announces extensive controls in the territory to stop the phenomenon of abusively issued medical leave, especially around the weekends and legal holidays. The official sent a message on social networks, declaring “Zero tolerance for frauding medical leave”.
The new Minister of Health, Rogobete. Photo: Facebook / Alexandru Rogobete
“I sent the Control Body of the Ministry of Health together with the Control Body of the National Health Insurance House in a common action in detail. It is not normal and is completely immoral as a whole system to take the money dedicated to hospitals, from the treatments of the patients and to finance the holidays of employees who benefit from medical leave” the minister wrote on Facebook.
According to Rogobete, about one third of all medical leave issued in 2024 – that is, around one million – were granted under suspicious conditions.
“The graph below is not an EKG. It is a graphic representation of the recurrence with which hundreds of thousands of medical leave are issued, in a suspicious way, fixed in the vicinity of the weekends and legal holidays. The predisposition to” illness “of some employees increases even more near the holidays,” said Rogobete, mentioning that this situation raises question marks.
“My firm call to the medical staff is not to issue medical leave without medical basis. It costs us money (of the order of billions of lei) and we seriously waste indispensable resources to patients with serious conditions (oncological, cardiac or stroke) who really need”, the minister warned.
Just a few days ago, Alexandru Rogobete stated that the taxation of medical leave would not affect the patient’s income, “It will not fall”, but it will discourage the granting of fictitious holidays.
The government program provides “Reform of medical leave”, by strengthening “The integrities of the social health insurance system and combating abuses in providing medical leave.”
The document provides for the regulation of granting medical leave and sanctions for doctors who provide fictitious medical leave. The government wants more people to pay the health contribution (CASS), so that the system has more money.
