Romanian doctors in the state and private sector

Some doctors prefer to work for state-owned clinics, while others decide to open their own facilities. This story will present two such cases of Romanian doctors, who chose separate ways.

*She chose to study Medicine as “it is one of the ways to get close to people and help them.” Ioana Marinescu, a graduate of Targu-Mures Medical School, says that her innate gift made her choose a controversial and little-known field – acupuncture.

Although she did not open a private cabinet, Ioana Marinescu considers this field can bring enough material satisfaction.

After many post-graduate studies and after she became a specialist in general medicine and in labour medicine in 1992, Ioana Marinescu decided to approach an alternative curing method – acupuncture.

In 1995, after she had achieved competence in this field, she started practising acupuncture with Pantelimon Barbulescu, a well-known researcher.

Ioana Marinescu began her career in acupuncture and family medicine by her own in 1999, within a cabinet of a state-owned clinic. She has 2,600 patients now.

She considers that the doctor using acupuncture as a treatment “must be light-handed and radiate positive energy, as it is conveyed to the patients.” The World Health Organisation indicates this treatment for particular diseases and only during certain stages.

When asked about her income as a doctor, Ioana Marinescu said that 75% of the money she earns comes from practising family medicine, while the other 25% is derived from the acupuncture techniques she performs.

*After giving up medicine in the state-owned units, as he had worked as an Senior Ophthalmologist with the National Geriatrics and Gerontology Institute for three years, doctor Mircea Cristian Moraru shyly stepped into the private medical practice.

Five years ago, he and his wife Ozana Cernica, opened the ocular microsurgery clinic Oculus, the first of this kind in Romania.

In 1992, Moraru started to perform eye surgery within a small ophthalmology department of Clinic no.2, from Bucharest. He found a Dutch partner and managed to equip the rented cabinet with all the required technology, resorting to Romanian-Dutch clinic Opticontact for performing surgery.

The business developed in three years and the two doctors decided to open a new company by themselves. They set up the Ophthalmologic Centre Oculus, operating in a new head-office, which is owned by the couple.

Doctor Moraru says that Oculus is the best-equipped ocular microsurgery clinic in Romania and its only competitors are the state-owned hospitals which have state-of-the-art equipment.

“I equipped this clinic by myself, without resorting to the public money,” the doctor specifies. Oculus has a turnover of about 3 billion lei monthly, depending on the number of patients and the number of surgical interventions.