Private medical insurance emerges

Insurance company Interamerican Romania and private medical service provider Medisystem are now starting the creation of the first private medical insurance system in Romania: Euroclinic, by beginning the construction works on a wing of the Floreasca Emergency Hospital.
Interamerican and Medisystem, both of them controlled by Greek companies part of the Eureko financial group, will introduce a healthcare insurance pack on the market, as an addition to the public ones. The system, which entails 13 million euros in investments, will become operational by the end of 2003.
Euroclinic is structured on three levels: medical office, clinic, and hospital. The first stage is scheduled to comprise a hospital (the construction of which is due to begin now as a wing of the Floreasca Hospital) and three modules to include a specialised clinic and 8 to 16 medical offices each.
The hospital will have some 100 beds, distributed in one-bed rooms, equipped with TV, Internet and video, with a heliport to be added, as well.
The system will be first of all created to provide medical services to the future clients of Interamerican Romania, which will launch private medical insurance policies on the market.
The first stage of Euroclinic targets Bucharest only. Other modules (the clinic plus the 8-16 offices) will be set up in Timisoara and Constanta later.
The average cost per additional healthcare insurance pack, as sold in the Western European countries amounts to about $20 a month.
Another player has announced its entry on the private medical insurance market, as well. The newcomer is Omniasig Asigurari de Viata, part of the Omniasig Group controlled by the Israeli-American investment fund TBIH Holding.
Omniasig Viata (Life) will hold 65% in a medical insurance company to become operational next spring. The company will work with private clinics, but also with state-run hospitals, if any surgery is needed.
At the moment, anyone looking for an alternative to the public medical services can go to the private clinics (such as Medicover or Medsana), which provide consultations with payment up front or by subscription.
Certain estimates show more than 20,000 people in Bucharest have taken subscriptions with private clinics. The major shortcoming of the private clinics is that they offer neither surgeries nor hospital admission.
The common practice in the West for those looking for better or more prompt treatment than the public services can provide is buying an additional medical insurance (covered by the employer and/or employee, which also goes for subscriptions to private clinics) that secures access to the entire service range – medical offices, clinics or hospitals.