The health system in Romania is facing an acute crisis of staff. More and more public hospitals announce that they can no longer provide guard lines, thus endangering patients with serious conditions.
Hospital hall. Photo: Pixabay
The president of the company of ATI, Șerban Bubenek, proposes a radical solution, namely the prohibition of the double practice, so that the doctors are forced to choose between the public and the private sector. Together with the College of Physicians and a few parliamentarians, he intends to promote a legislative change.
In Slatina, patients with heart attack or other heart emergencies cannot be treated for over two months, despite the purchase of a new angiograph and organizing several competitions for hiring cardiologists.
At the County Hospital in Ploiești, the guard lines for neurology, internal diseases and ENT cannot be covered, and the patients are sent to Târgoviște. According to the medical director Andrei Ilinca, the neurology section works with only three doctors from a need for 9-10, one of whom is exempted from guards for medical reasons. Similar problems are also reported at the hospital in Târgu Jiu.
The exodus of doctors might aggravate
The Romanian medical personnel crisis risks aggravating itself in the next period. A report by the Romanian College of Physicians (CMR) shows that, in 2023, over 1,200 doctors requested the current professional certificate, the document needed to engage abroad. Their number increased by 50% compared to the previous year.
“In order to be able to ask the doctors to go in all areas of the country, there must be able to give their medical act and this can be done with an adequate infrastructure and a working team. In vain you are Chirug if you do not have that, you have no cardiologist. The multidicpiline team that can ensure the care of serious cases. And a pay after performance would be required ”, says the president of the CMR, quoted by Pro TV News.
CMR takes into account such a regulation, the prohibition of double practice, but stresses that any legislative modification must respect the rights of the liberal profession.
Bubenek: “It can no longer be tolerated in any way as part of our colleagues who are paid by the state during the program to go and work in private hospitals. If we continue that way, in 10 years the public service will be destroyed. There are heads of section of public hospitals who advise their patients: I do not operate here at the Public Hospital, come to private, that here we have infections and the doctor is paid by the state and is the head of the section to prevent these infections ”.
