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 Duță, 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.