Growth should come from the investments completed in previous years reaching maturity now, with only a handful of new projects announced. Whereas operators would fight a battle of clinics and hospitals inauguration in the past, now they are cautious.
A look back over the first quarter shows it was a difficult time for private medical business because the health minister announced he intended to stop reimbursing procedures done in the private healthcare sector. His intention did not materialize, but investments were immediately halted.
“I don’t expect new investment, on the contrary I expect small and medium-sized players to leave the market, because some projects were not well thought out. Investors made the same mistakes as in real estate: they went into the business without actually knowing what it was about,” said Robert Serban who owns Gral Medical together with his wife Georgeta.
“Everyone saw medical service as an El Dorado, because this is where growth was and profits were made. They did not stop to think about the most important thing: what is it that they contribute to this market, what makes them stand out?”
Gral expects growth of 19% in its revenue to about EUR19 million in 2013 and scheduled the opening of its first hospital for the second quarter. Robert Serban said. He added Gral was on schedule with its targets after the first quarter.
The hospitals to be inaugurated this year were announced as early as 2012 or even before that, considering no company has said it plans to invest in a large private hospital since the beginning of the year. Other than Gral, Medas and Romgermed, too, might open big hospitals in 2013.
The latest private hospital in Romania was opened by Italian-held Policlinico di Monza last summer (and officially inaugurated in January 2013). The Monza hospital is located in Bucharest and has a floor area of 18,000 square meters distributed over nine floors. It has 140 beds and the investment amounted to EUR40 million.
The private medical services industry is estimated at half a billion euros and preserved its growth rate even during the crisis. More and more people have been talking about a saturation of this industry lately and therefore it is not certain whether all the existing projects will remain in business or not.
The data ZF has show Romania has 24 large and medium-sized private hospitals, 12 of which in Bucharest alone. In all, 69 (private and state-owned) hospitals in Bucharest work with the National Health Insurance House.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)