Healthcare in Romania
The Ministry of Health of Romania is required to manage and supervise the public healthcare sector.
[2] Every citizen of Romania is entitled to cost-free, unrestricted medical procedures, as established by a physician only if they present themselves with a health card as of 9 September 2015, proving to have paid insurance.
At the time, it was a common practice for foreign doctors to be brought in to provide healthcare for the upper class.
Colțea Hospital, in Bucharest, was built by Mihai Cantacuzino between 1701 and 1703; composed of many buildings, each with 12 to 30 beds, a church, three chapels, a school, and doctors' and teachers' houses.
From the 19th century up until today, it has been compulsory that all children get vaccinated against hepatitis B, tuberculosis, tetanus, poliomyelitis, rubella and diphtheria.
Romania is nowadays one of the nations with the highest success rate of organ transplantation surgeries.
[10] Only in the 1980, at the Fundeni Clinic Institute also in Bucharest, professor Eugeniu Proca succeeded in transplanting a kidney from mother to son.
Every year, Romania has made progress both from a technical perspective but also by increasing the donors number.
Furthermore, the changes also mention the fact that diseases should be treated with local, generic medicine rather than expensive treatments and that doctors will be able to negotiate their salary.
[18] During the early 18th century, the aristocracy would send their children away to Vienna or Paris to attend a medicine faculty there.
Eventually, this practice became so common that most Romanian doctors were schooled externally, and began sharing their knowledge with future medics.
[19] The practice of sending future doctors abroad has ceased when the first medical school in Romania became operational.
The situation has gotten so desperate, that the Queen of Romania, had become a nurse herself, and started working on the front lines, attending to injured people.
Furthermore, doctors used to receive a lot of "tips" consisting of chocolate, cigarettes and fine drinks, which were also rationalized goods.
According to the survey conducted by the Euro health consumer index in 2015 Romania was still among the European countries in which unofficial payments to doctors were reported most commonly.
[25] A classification of 461 hospitals in Romania conducted by the Health Ministry in 2011 shows that 58% of them fall into the weakest categories: four and five.
According to the same classification, the top performance hospitals outside the capital are in Cluj-Napoca (four), Iaşi and Timișoara (two each), Constanța and Târgu Mureș (one each).
SMURD operates independently from the regular emergency response services, but it can be dialed and asked for by calling 112.
[29][30] The country is currently investing in three new regional hospitals in Iasi, Cluj-Napoca and Craiova that offer centralized medical services.
The government has received funding from the European Investment Bank equalling to €930 million and also offering technical support.
[31][32][33] In the major urban areas, medical facilities are generally well-equipped, with world-class private healthcare also available.
In rural areas and small towns, healthcare is sub-standard, with patients often asked to buy basic supplies such as gloves and syringes.
The deduction is made right at the paying point, and pharmacies further obtain their money back from the Ministry of Health.
[39] Per capita, Romania has the lowest medical expenses inside the European Union (€358 per inhabitant in 2012).
[40] As of 2010, it was the European country with the lowest rate of low income households provided of water supply and a private toilet for sanitation.
As a consequence of the bribery that has been "traditionally" practiced ever since the communist era, a sizable number of patients have reported that they have had to bribe the doctors and nurses in order to receive good treatment.
Thus, doctors at the two command centres provide medical support in real time to any of the hospitals in the country and pursue the patient's vital signs.
