Family doctors in Romania stage protest

Severely under-financed, the Romanian healthcare system faces major problems with negative consequences for the medical staff and patients alike.

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Leyla Cheamil, 04.04.2016, 13:38

The Romanian healthcare system seems to be suffering
just as much as the patients seeking its help. Severely under-financed for
years and constantly neglected by the authorities, the healthcare system has
major problems with negative consequences for the medical staff and patients
alike.

Unhappy with the present situation, family doctors
have decided to express their dissatisfaction by refusing to issue subsidised
prescriptions and referral letters for two days, on April 1st and 4th.
Their main demand is for the terms for the signing of the addenda to the
contract concluded with the county branches of the national health insurance
bodies to be observed. They also say they no longer want to sign the contracts
after the established date as have so far, because in some cases they had to
pay for the recommended treatment from their own pockets. The family doctors’
protest is a way of sending a warning signal over a situation that has become a
pattern in recent years, as Rodica Tanasescu, the head of the National Society
for Family Medicine, tells us:

For ten years we have been put in the uncomfortable
situation of having to illegally sign contracts retroactively. An addendum must
be signed while the previous contract is still valid. Our protest is a signal
that we want to start doing things in a legal, natural manner. Some of us are
willing to go all the way with the protest, while others are afraid to go on
after receiving certain phone calls.

Rodica Tanasescu has pointed out that the family
doctors’ protest is also a way of raising awareness to the fact that important
legal changes are needed for the contract that is to be signed in less than
three months. Protesters have also requested a doubling of the funds allotted
to primary care.

Health Minister Patriciu Achimas Cadariu hopes for a
budget revision that should bring additional funds to the healthcare system:

We have postponed the adoption of the contract’s new
provisions, and when we have a reevaluation of the entire system we can only
hope it will also bring along a budget revision. I call on all the people
involved to act responsibly. The health insurance bodies have done their job
and the system of signing the addenda has always worked.

Two organisations representing family doctors have
drawn up a document warning that family medicine is not a priority for the
government when creating the budget and the country’s economic policies and
that without the work of the family doctors the medical system will collapse.
The document, which has been sent to all important health-related institutions
in the country and the president, emphasises that the total amount earmarked
for the health system this year accounts for 4.2% of the GDP, but that the
state’s contribution to the GDP is only 0.86%. The rest is covered by people’s
own contributions to the health insurance system. In other words, the document
says, while the state supposedly provides free healthcare services to its
citizens, it relies almost exclusively on the contribution of citizens and
employers who pay health insurance contributions.