“It is a fledgling market, but we are at a moment where patients have started being educated and seeking niche services,” says Bogdan Stoian, the chief executive officer of medical center GynecoLand, a family business started in 1998 by physician Ioan Stoian. The business is organized as a private hospital specializing in gynecologic and breast surgery services.
In 2013, the business generated revenue of EUR1.6 million and had over 60 employees. For 2014, it expects EUR2 million in revenue.
With this revenue level, GynecoLand is a small player on the over half a billion euro healthcare market, but it is part of a business category now shaping up, that of niche services.
“The future of healthcare in Romania will be that of niche services,” said Peter Barta, consultant, CEO of Fundatia Post-Privatizare (Post-Privatization Foundation), a local entrepreneurship foundation set up by the European Commission in 1996.
He pointed out that there are few managers specialized in healthcare management in Romania and that medicine faculties should adjust their syllabus.
In the diagnostics field, physician Elena Claudia Teodorescu set up Donna Medical Center in 2011, a center that focuses on the diagnosis of breast and gynecology diseases.
Donna Medical Center does not have a contract with the national health house and investments were funded with a loan from Banca Transilvania.
According to data quoted by the founder of Donna Medical Center, 85% of Romania’s population accessed private healthcare services last year, from 34% in 2004. She estimates the private healthcare market stood at EUR550 million last year, up 10-12%, and expects it to reach EUR570 million this year, with EUR350 as services paid by the state and the rest by the population.
Iulian Plescan, chief operating officer of Centrele Ares, says that the founders were interested in overspecialization from the very beginning and that the two centers do not have a contract with the health house.
Ares is an Israeli-held company controlled by physician Oren Iancovici, which operates two centers, in Bucharest and Suceava. Investments in each of the two centers stood at EUR650,000. The company went from revenue of EUR50,0000 in 2008 to EUR2.8 million in 2013 and expects EUR3.3 million this year.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)