Romania’s Minister of Health, Alexandru Rogobete, announced Sunday that a nationwide inspection will be launched to investigate doctors working simultaneously in both public and private healthcare systems. The move follows the discovery of a surgeon at Elias Hospital in Bucharest who performed a private operation during scheduled hours at the state-run facility.
The case came to light after the surgeon posted a video on a private hospital’s social media page showing him preparing for a second surgery on Thursday, February 20th, at 12:00 PM. Rogobete revealed that the doctor had requested a day of leave from Elias Hospital for that same day, a request that was not formally approved, as it had not been submitted to the human resources department.
“You can only take leave if the management of the healthcare unit approves it,” Rogobete stated in a Digi24 interview Saturday evening. “That leave was somewhere in the office, it wasn’t submitted to the human resources department, so it couldn’t have been approved. What we have is a practice we are familiar with.”
Rogobete emphasized that the issue isn’t about a single doctor’s actions, but rather a systemic “phenomenon” that undermines the public healthcare system. “It’s not about the doctor, it’s about the phenomenon itself,” he said. “I don’t want the doctor to choose between public and private, either public or private.”
The Minister explained that when doctors are effectively working in both sectors concurrently, public hospitals do not receive full reimbursement from the National Health Insurance House (Casa Națională de Asigurări de Sănătate) for services. “If a doctor, during his hours at the state hospital for which he is paid, does not actually provide medical services in the public hospital, that hospital does not collect from the National Health Insurance House,” Rogobete explained. “This leads to the perennial problems we grasp, namely that the contract with the House is not fulfilled.”
According to Rogobete, the surgeon in question routinely performed approximately one operation per week at the public hospital, while simultaneously maintaining a busy private practice. The private hospital confirmed that the surgeon performed two operations on February 20th, at 8:40 AM and 12:45 PM, corroborating his presence during scheduled hours at the state hospital.
Rogobete stated that the Ministry of Health requested a report on all leave requests for February from Elias Hospital to verify the doctor’s claim. The hospital’s response confirmed that the leave had not been officially granted.
The Minister indicated that the inspection at Elias Hospital will begin Sunday, February 22nd, and will be followed by a broader national review of doctors’ schedules and activities. He has been publicly discussing the issue for nearly seven months, attempting to pressure the system to address the problem, but acknowledged that “it’s evident that it doesn’t work just with kind words.”
Rogobete also noted the difficulty in quantifying the extent of the issue, stating, “It’s hard to give you a figure. It’s a phenomenon. I don’t want to generalize, obviously there are honest people in the health system who, unfortunately, are affected, whose image is affected by such behaviors that have nothing to do with good faith.”