The Romanian executive unblocked more than 6,850 positions in the public healthcare system through a memorandum published on Tuesday, July 28, amid a general strike in the healthcare system that is still ongoing.
The positions will be distributed as follows: 6,452 positions for hospitals financed from the National Single Health Insurance Fund (FNUASS) and 398 positions for County Ambulance Services (SAJ). Around 2,000 positions overall will go to county capital hospitals to relieve pressure on existing staff.
The largest share of the unblocked positions is among nurses and auxiliary staff, categories essential to the functioning of hospitals and ambulance services, the Ministry of Health showed. The complete structure of the unblocked positions is as follows: 2,593 positions for nurses; 2,567 for auxiliary medical staff (nursing aides, stretcher-bearers, and others); 1,433 for doctors; 257 positions for pharmacists, biologists, biochemists, and physicists.
The decision allows hospitals and ambulance services to launch recruitment procedures and fill vacant positions and balance human resources.
The same day, interim prime minister Ilie Bolojan said during a press briefing that the ongoing general strike in the healthcare system is based on “lies and disinformation.”
Bolojan apologized to patients who were turned away from hospitals and assured that the unitary wage law, which sparked the strike, would not lead to cuts in salaries or earnings in the public sector.
“I specify once again that if this law were adopted, no salary in the public sector, no earnings in the public sector would decrease. On the contrary, as a result of correcting certain inequities, a good part of salaries should increase, but obviously these salary increases cannot be made based on loans; they can only be made to the extent permitted by the payment capacity of the Romanian economy,” the head of the executive said.
Bolojan argued that most of the payment of the expenses incurred by hospitals is made through direct allocations from the National Health Insurance House, and two-thirds of the salaries paid in the public healthcare sector come through direct allocations and not through payment for services provided to patients. “As a result, hospital managers are under no pressure to adapt the hospitals’ service offering, the size of departments, and their types to patients’ needs,” he said.
The new wage law will also lead to the recalculation of tariffs in hospitals “so that the operation of hospitals in the coming years is based on the services provided to patients and each resolved case brings in an amount from which hospital salaries and all other expenses are covered,” according to the PM.
Ilie Bolojan pointed to the low occupancy rate of several hospitals and the share of hospital expenses that goes to salaries. “Where personnel expenses exceeded 85-90%, as we have in some hospitals, we are in a situation where that hospital practically no longer exists for patients, but exists only for employees, because it no longer has money to pay for medicines, tests, combat hospital-acquired infections, and so on,” he said.
In reply, former healthcare minister Alexandru Rogobete said that the prime minister did not understand the differences between the types of hospitals.
“There is the category of emergency hospitals, whether they are county hospitals or emergency institutes, where the average occupancy rate is somewhere around 90% annually. It is enormous. International recommendations say that an emergency hospital should have an occupancy rate of no more than 75%. Why? In the event of a mass-casualty accident, for example, they must have the capacity to expand and take in those patients,” Rogobete explained, according to Euronews Romania.
The former health minister specified that there are also hospitals where the occupancy rate is lower, but the reason is not the lack of patients, but the shortage of medical staff.
Unions in the Romanian healthcare sector launched a general strike on Tuesday, July 28, to protest against the new wage law, which they say will cut wages and perpetuate inequities. During the strike, hospitals provide only medical assistance and essential services.
(Photo source: gov.ro)
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