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Healthcare: Hospitals could reorganise as public corporations, business corporations or NGOs
Minister of Health Eugen Nicolaescu said on Monday that in the future, a Romanian hospital will be able to operate as either a public corporation, a business corporation or a non-governmental organization, with all these reorganization options allowed by Romanian law.
'We are changing the hospital's status and turn it into a responsible entity. According to Romanian law, a public hospital can be a public corporation, a business corporation or a nongovernmental organization. Some people are afraid. Regardless of the form it reorganises into, the hospital remains under the state's public property, that is in property of the Ministry of Health or the local council, depending on the hospital's location. A public institution cannot engage bank loans or issue bonds. As an economic entity we are now talking of, it can do this. So, there is an increased possibility for the hospital to develop and upgrade. The public hospital does not get stripped of its public utility,' Eugen Nicolaescu told a debate. The Minister of Health stressed that hospitals should be working according to economic principles.
'The business environment needs to be increasingly better prepared, better connected to the actions of the government, because it's the business environment that brings added value and ultimately directs taxes and fees to the, regrettably, not too rich budget. The hospitals that today are public institutions operate rigidly, get milked and everybody is unhappy with them. If these hospitals ran according to economic principles then the business environment could be better represented and suffer less from ineffective actions,' said Nicolaescu.