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Healthcare : Romanian versus EU hospitals
The 27 EU member states have together 12,800 public and private hospitals according to centralized data of Wall-stereet.ro. Most of them are in France and Germany, countries which cumulate more than a third at EU level. In 2010 Romania had 428 state hospitals and 25 private ones. Since than 67 public hospitals were closed down while several private companies inaugurated 10 private hospitals. At present, we do not know how many hospitals there are. “Statistics for 2011 are still considered,” this is the answer we received from the National Statistic and Information Center in Public Health.
Considering official information that Romania has 453 hospitals we wondered whether the number is smaller or higher than the one reported by other EU countries.Statistics about the number of public and private hospitals in each EU state shows how “generous” and diversified the offer of medical services for EU patients is.
Since EU statistics do not offer information about the number of public and private hospitals in each member state, Wall-Street.ro asked health ministries and national statistics institutes to learn these figures. In some cases, data were extracted from official studies and reports.
The results obtained show that in western EU countries, the tendency is that the number of private hospitals exceeds those of state hospitals. For instance in 2009, in France there were 966 publics hospitals , 1051 private ones and 734 non profit hospitals. There was a similar situation in Germany where last year there were 630 public hospitals, 679 private ones and 755 non profit hospitals.
In other countries, especially in the central-eastern area, the number of state hospitals is higher than that of private units. It is the case of Hungary, which has 103 state hospitals and 12 private ones.
Romania offers another example as it had 17 times less private hospitals than public ones in 2010. Poland has 177 units versus 570 state hospitals. On the other hand the Czech Republic has 67 state hospitals and double the number of private ones. In Lithuania there were 149 public and 14 private hospitals, in Latvia 46 public and 19 private and in Estonia 38 public and 21 private units.
Small EU states have fewer hospitals: in Cyprus there are 26 hospitals, in Luxembourg 13 and in Malta 6.
The ratio between the number of beds per 1000 inhabitants is telling , a chapter in which Romania had a good position in 2009. Then there were 662.6 hospital beds per 100,000 inhabitants, a little behind Germany, which was on top of the classification with 822.9 beds per 100,000 persons.
More important than the number of beds is the performance of the medical system. Here Romania is at the bottom of the list losing 5 positions in 2009 compared to 2008. Romania ranked 32 out of 33 states, with 489 points out of 1000 possible ones. According to the draft law to be launched for public debate, hospitals will be reorganized (as non profit companies, foundations, units) , physicians will be paid according to their performances and additional investments will be attracted.