Doctors say cuts in family doctors' budgets will have negative consequences for the whole health system
Articol de Radiojurnal, 16 Ianuarie 2024, 22:06
Family doctors and specialist outpatient clinics in several cities across the country protested today, dissatisfied with the amounts proposed by the authorities for the settlement of services.
They say that the decrease in the budget of family doctors' offices will have negative consequences for the entire health system, but especially for patients.
RRA reporter Adriana Turea spoke to doctors who protested this afternoon in front of the Titan Clinic in Bucharest.
- We have a lot of consultations, paid for by the insurance company. Let's take an average of 20 consultations per day. Any colleague, any minister, any secretary of state should come one day to any of my colleagues, of any specialty, in the Titan Polyclinic, to see how many patients we have per day. Now I speak for myself. I get paid for 20 consultations and average 32-34 day to day, that's on top of those who come in for clearances, vaccinations, COVID tests. We get paid strictly for that many consultations. Everything else comes in on miscellaneous or per capita.
- I'm allowed to see 28 patients a day. I don't schedule more than 15 patients, because to see a patient, according to the Insurance House, for a quarter of an hour, I at least can't, that is to say, to put in his papers, his card, the data on his ticket and to consult him. I'm trying to do medicine, I'm not trying to do accounting. But there's no way if the accounting collapses we can keep up the expenses. Example: last month heat in this polyclinic, last year in December came 40.000, this year it was 105.000.
Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu gave assurances yesterday that no family doctor's office will close, the amount of medical services paid for this category is still under negotiation.
On Thursday, representatives of family doctors are expected to attend talks at the National Health Insurance House.
As a reminder, a draft regulation, currently under public debate on the CNAS website, stipulates, among other things, that the funding granted to family doctors will decrease by more than 30% in 2024 and the rural bonus granted to them will be eliminated.
Translated by: Radu Matei
