The health-care system must be modernized

Prime Minister Ludovic Orban says the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed a number of flaws in the Romanian health-care system and promises investments in the field

Eugen Coroianu, 03.06.2020, 14:00

It’s quite obvious that, after this pandemic, we will have to seriously think about the Romanian health-care system, said Prime Minister Ludovic Orban on Tuesday,
when he attended a debate on this topic. He stressed the fact that the
situation created by the new coronavirus highlighted things that were not
working, things that must be fixed and the fact that, for a long period of
time, the health-care system in Romania had been treated like a Cinderella. The
PM said that the infrastructure was old and creating ‘lots of problems’, as very
little investment was promoted.

Ludovic Orban also stressed the fact that the health-care
system in Romania is chronically under-financed, counting on the contributions
of a small number of Romanian citizens, because there are many categories of
citizens that are exempt from paying, although they benefit from such services.
Moreover, the Prime Minister also stressed, the level of digitization in the
system is extremely low.

PM Ludovic Orban: The health card system, and that is a known
fact, is collapsing. The digitization level in health care is extremely low.
We ourselves, over this period, have been faced with the need for digitization, with all the data that we had to manage in a very short period
of time and lots of information that had to be transmitted fast. It’s quite
obvious that things need to be changed immediately.

The Prime Minister also recalled a positive thing during
the pandemic, namely that the medical system adapted quite rapidly and had a
prompt reaction in the fight against Covid-19. He also highlighted the need for
measures regarding hospital management. It’s clear that the procedures,
although they exist, are not known, they have not been really implemented and
hospital management is, in most cases, done without any proper training. Also,
there is no real authority to impose the right rules in hospitals, and that is
why there is a polycentric system at hospital level, the head of Government
also said.

Ludovic Orban also stressed that with regard to the medicines
policy, the Government will have to intervene quite seriously in the coming
period. Maintaining this clawback system, without rethinking it, led to the
disappearance from the Romanian market of hundreds, maybe thousands of
medicines, Orban explained. He said that in the coming period, investments in
health will be a priority for the Government, alongside investments in
transport and energy infrastructure, education, communications, research and
development.

Also on Tuesday, the Health Minister Nelu Tataru talked
about a number of issues facing the health-care system, such as politicization, poor
management, legislation, the lack of a coherent investment policy and the
medicines policy. We must think of a health pact, we need professionals, the
minister said.

Nelu Tataru has also stated that Romania is on a downward
trend as regards new cases of infection with the new coronavirus, and the
number of serious cases is also decreasing. Community spread of the virus is
low, and the number of tests conducted across the country has diminished, the
minister said.

The Health Ministry has announced that a sero-prevalence
study will be conducted over June-September 2020, with the aim of monitoring
the spread and thus take the necessary protection measures in the future. According
to estimates, some 29 thousand residual serums are to be collected and
analyzed. (M.Ignatescu)