The Ministry of Health has published the data for each hospital regarding the claims for severance pay requested by the medical staff in February. This after he was accused of trying to cover up the phenomenon of bribery in hospitals.
Photo: The Truth Archive
“Exciting news, friends. Either public pressure and media coverage worked, or I don't know what happened. On Thursday, March 7, the Ministry of Health also uploaded the data per hospital on data.gov.ro for the month of February 2024 of the Patient Feedback Mechanism, deleting the old file where there were only those at the national level. So in theory we could continue «The Spaghetti Map», but I will wait to see if I give them the same next month. That's because it's a lot of work to update and modify the site to accommodate the 8 questions instead of 10, and I honestly don't feel like working for nothing so that the system changes again”wrote on Facebook, Dragoș Vana – the founder of the graphs.ro platform, which creates the map of hospital wages based on public data.
We remind you that Vana announced last week that the map of embezzlement in hospitals can no longer be produced, because the data on hospitals and counties are no longer published, but only a total. In addition, the patient feedback form has been modified so that patients are no longer asked if they were asked for a tip, but only if they want to report that they were asked for money or other forms of compensation, G4Media reports.
Following an order from the Minister of Health, Alexandru Rafila, from the end of last year, the patient feedback form has been modified. In its original form, patients could answer two distinct questions related to the rope:
9. Have you been asked for money or attention by doctors or nurses? YES NO
10. (if YES to question 9) Do you want to report to the anti-corruption officer of the Ministry of Health that you have been asked for money or attention?
In the new form of the form, the only question about the rope is:
If you have been asked for money or other types of compensation by the medical staff, do you want to report this fact? YES/NO (If YES was answered, the questioned person will receive the following message: “Thank you! Please file a complaint with the competent authorities or you can send a notification to the Ministry of Health through the postal services or to the e-mail address: [email protected].”)
Practically, the extent of the bribery phenomenon in Romanian hospitals can no longer be assessed correctly, because of the way the question is formulated.
The president of the Coalition of Organizations of Patients with Chronic Diseases (COPAC), Radu Gănescu, told “Adevărul” that he is certain that this initial measure to stop publishing in detail the hospitals where stipends are demanded was taken at the request of hospital managers.
“I guarantee you there was a lot of pressure to change things. These managers did not like those public reports. And then the Ministry of Health opted for the lack of transparency, for hiding the phenomenon. I repeat, we are talking about a concealment of the phenomenon, because it exists, and the data communicated so far expressed only half of the rate of spies in hospitals because not all patients reported. Basically, they were afraid to do so. However, with and without reporting, the spade moves forward in the medical system. Moreover, since these reports have been made, for eight years, the phenomenon has increased, not decreased. And it will continue as long as patients continue to have this habit of taking money out of their pockets, from the porter to the doctor, including nurses. In addition, this phenomenon will be eradicated when the medical body will rid itself of those colleagues who ask for bribes or even, worse, condition the medical act, in which case we are already talking about villainy. So we, the patients, and the medical body, but also the authorities, must do something. For eight years, they collected data, they knew about the embezzlement reported at each individual hospital, but no action was taken. I don't know, you send the control body, check, talk to people. Has this been done? For eight years nothing was done. So we're still hiding the garbage under the rug, and the costs have increased in the medical system, but the money goes on.“, stated the president of COPAC.
Introduced in 2016
The patient feedback mechanism has been implemented since 2016 and aims to evaluate patient satisfaction, the quality of services provided by hospitals and the notification of integrity incidents.
During this period, the number of patients completing the questionnaire increased from just over 2,000 in 2016 to over 50,000 today. So, although the percentage of patients who say they were asked for money by the medical staff has decreased, the number of complaints is higher. In December 2016, only 117 patients reported being asked to pay for hospital care, and now more than 2,000 claim so.
