| An IT Program for the Health Care System 21/12/2010 |
| (2010-12-21) |
| Last updated: 2010-12-22 13:41 EET |
Romania’s efforts to reform its health care system are far from bearing fruit, despite authorities’ claim that reform is a priority. The reason is simple: the reformation of any system requires money, and the health care system does not benefit from much of that. The more so as the funds that decision makers are now managing are not substantial enough, and in its attempt to over the crisis, Romania is directing a large part of these funds towards investment. The fact that Romania ranks last in the EU with regard to the share of the GDP allocated to health-care requires no further comment.
Moreover, a report issued by the Academic Society in Romania shows that not only is the system under-financed, but money is not allocated efficiently. However, steps have been taken towards putting order into the system. One of them was launching, early this week, the centralized version of an IT integrated system in healthcare. With this system, health insurance agencies, for instance, will be able to control the prescriptions issued by family physicians and supervise pharmacies and suppliers.
The purpose of this program is to eliminate fraud and implicitly to save millions of Euros. Attending the launch of the new IT program, president Traian Basescu said that restructuring the health care system in Romania was a major objective. This entails, after decentralization, turning some 150-200 under-performing hospitals into day centers or elderly homes, but without laying off medical staff, who can be transferred to other hospitals.
According to Lucian Duta, the president of the National Health Insurance Agency, the implementation of this IT system has revealed the real number of patients, that is 19.5 million insured people, which in turn translates into expenditure cuts. According to Duta, before that there were some 27 million people in records, actually more than Romania’s entire population, which in the past 20 years has dropped by over 1.5 million people, from 23.2 million in early 1990. Also, Lucian Duta has stated, the Integrated IT System is the basis for the introduction of the health card, which will provide complete health records for each patient. Without a card, patients will only benefit from free emergency care.
|
2025-04-03
Print
Listen again