“The basic package (which was introduced this summer and includes the services CNAS pays for) is an important project. It is quite generous, now, too generous even, so private insurance providers have a hard time finding their place on the market, but I can assure them we will make room for them,” Ciurchea said.
“We need one more insurer on the market to take on some of the financial risk,” the official added.
He attended the ZF Pharma Summit 2014 organized by ZF in partnership with Vodafone, ARPIM, LAWG, ADRFR, Terapia Ranbaxy, Polisano, Serban & Musneci, Antibiotice (ATB.RO), Roche, Opel, Ionescu Sava, MedLife, Gruia Dufaut, Easi, Farmexpert and APMGR.
CNAS has a more than EUR5 billion budget and is the main funding provider of the healthcare system in Romania. On the other hand, private insurance had a slow start in the country, with the market amounting to about EUR20 million. Private insurance picked up the pace this year but is waiting for the government to give it a boost.
Dorel Sandesc, the Health Ministry official in charge of emergency medicine, says there can be no healthcare system without a combination of public and private systems.
“Equal competition, however, means equal obligations. There’s a lot of work to be done here because equal competition means giving public hospitals some rights, too,” Sandesc said.
“Private hospitals, which provide very high quality care transfer complex cases to the public hospitals, which bear most of the cost. Private hospitals have to become more involved in the emergency care system.”
The private healthcare system in Romania needs 15 more years to close the gap to the similar sectors in the region and private medical insurance will play an important part in the system only after having managed to catch up.
“In 15 years, probably, with proper financing, things will be as they are in Turkey (which has one of the most developed private healthcare markets in Europe i.e.),” said Dorin Bica, a neurosurgeon who used to work in France and returned to Marie Curie Hospital in Bucharest.
Both the public and the private healthcare systems in Romania can address as complex cases as the systems of the other countries, Bica said. The operating room of Marie Curie, for instance, uses the same equipment as hospitals in Paris use, he added. This particular operating room required EUR3 million privately funded investments.
“Our goal is to have the medical system in Romania equal the system in Turkey, Paris and ultimately New York,” Bica added.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)