Doctors are discontent with the allocated budget

Doctors think the budget allocated to the national health system is too low, as well as their salaries, and claim that the lack of money will prevent hospitals and health clinics from operating in good conditions.

Family doctors, who claim that the little money allocated to family medicine is rather sickening patients than curing them, were the last to express their discontent.

For this reason, the National Employers Association of Family Doctors and the National Society of Family Doctors advise doctors to stop signing the contracts proposed by the National Health House.

Family doctors claim that more than half of the 11,500 surgeries are on the brink of bankruptcy because of the measures that have been taken this year. The increase in the health system expenditures has limited patients’ access to their family doctors and crowded emergency rooms in hospitals.

The National Employers Association of Family Doctors President, Doina Mihăilă, says that the 2011 project regarding contracts for providing health service doesn’t bring anything good.

‘They are reintroducing an indicative budget for medicines. In other words, some kind of a threshold. This way, we are supposed to play God and decide who should live and who should die, otherwise I can’t explain how I can make a selection if not by natural selection – you receive medication, you don’t – and then we will see who gets better and who does not!’ Doina Mihăilă stated.

If the budget were to be overshot, the surgery would be controlled by the National House representatives, and this way doctors would be tempted to limit themselves to this budget.
The National Health Insurance House Director, Dorin Ionescu, claims that the indicative budget is just an assessment instrument.

‘The term budget does not imply they get to receive a sum of money, which they can’t exceed. It is just an instrument for assessing, measuring and comparing doctors mainly as far as work and exprenditures go’, Dorin Ionescu stated.

With regard to the constant decrease in the budget allocated to family medicine from the health fund, Dorin Ionescu explained that, on the contrary, in the last three years there has been an absolute growing trend.

‘Money is being allocated depending on the budget, on the fact that they have sick patients on the waiting list, which means they are carrying out examinations.

'By changing this, we only increase the sum of money allocated to these doctors for patient examinations, for providing patient care to those on the list and those they actually get to examine’, Dorin Ionescu stated.

Doctors threaten that they will stop signing contracts for providing health service, which means patients would have to pay in order to be examined in medical practices.

The House representative accused family doctors of not communicating, which, in his opinion, is to the damage of both patients and doctors.


Translated by Raluca Mizdrea and Gabriela Lungu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University