ZF Expert participants: Healthcare system needs to be rethought from the ground up
The architecture of the healthcare system is wrong and needs to
be changed. On the one hand, the National Health Insurance House,
which manages almost 4 billion euros in funds of the system, says
its hands are tied because it is forced by legislation to finance
all Romanian hospitals even if they do not provide quality
services, on the other hand, the Health Ministry says there has
been no control of the system because of the lack of an IT
system.
These were the conclusions of the ZF Expert debate yesterday, which
was attended by Levente Vass, personal advisor to the health
minister, Nicolae Lucian Duţă, president of the National Health
Insurance House (CNAS), Marius Savu, director of the Hospitals and
Medical Services Administration (ASSM) within the Bucharest City
Hall, Ilan Gonen, medical services expert, and Wargha Enayati, CEO
of Centrul Medical Unirea (Unirea Medical Centre).
"A computerised system will bring control into the system. There
have been instances of fictitious patients, so one cannot talk
about the lack of nurses in those hospitals because half the
sections were empty. There is a chronic lack of restructuring,"
Levente Vass said.
City and town halls, which manage most of Romanian hospitals at
present, are the third entity to get involved in a hospital's
operations, after the Ministry and CNAS. However, none of the
institutions have direct control over how the funds are
spent.