Despite its expertise, Romania's medical system is ”sick”. Unfortunately, the system is affected by a number of issues that essentially impede people from receiving care. Numerous abuses have been noticed throughout the years, making patients' lives difficult and resulting in uncomfortable circumstances. At the moment, the existence of these quandaries has managed to make being a patient in Romanian hospitals an experience that no one wants to go through.
Thousands of people have recently witnessed one of the most egregious problems: the state of hospital degradation, particularly the conditions in which patients are forced to stay during hospitalizations. At the same time, such problems cause medical facilities to be neglected. The problem of in-hospital infections is well recognized to the general public, and it is one of the most common concerns that patients have when they are admitted to the hospital. It is unknown whether they will return home healthier or sicker than before, and this reality requires action.
Furthermore, due to the system's lack of transparency, patients are always left in a condition of confusion. Many examples have been documented in the past, particularly during the SARS-VOC-2 pandemic, when many worried people lacked access to information about the state of their relatives in hospitals. Many individuals were unable to determine whether or not their loved ones admitted in hospitals were in good health.
The system's efficiency is further hampered by a lack of transparency. A patient in a Romanian hospital has no way of knowing how much money was spent on his treatment or how it was spent. the inability to obtain a file from the Emergency Department in order to request a second opinion.These are fundamental aspects that every patient should be aware of.
FACIAS ran, between April 2021 and February 2022, the "Be informed, not abused!" project. Within it, several important problems in the field of Health were reported for which our support was requested.
Following all these aspects, FACIAS comes to the attention of the citizens with the "Romanian patient - fair laws and maximum transparency" project.
Project's objectives:
- Improving the population's knowledge and understanding of Romanian patient's rights.
- Identifying the institutions in charge of enforcing patient-related norms since, despite the existence of such laws, they cannot be enforced due to a lack of norms;
- Persuading the Romanian government to modernize the use of the health card so that the patient can access the system at any time and see for himself what the state has spent money on in relation to his health;
- Proposing a plan to impose an obligation to record surgical interventions in operating rooms so that they can be used subsequently, especially for the patients' benefit;
- FACIAS also seeks to persuade the Romanian government to regulate the patient's immediate access to personal medical file only on the basis of the patient's written / verbal request, based on an access code (only with the right to see / download, not to change), as well as the patient's permanent access to the hospitalization form, in digital format, without the need for various commissions and approvals in this regard.
- FACIAS also wants the Romanian government to commit to ongoing, transparent monitoring and the reduction of intra-hospital infections by enacting legislation that requires hospital units to follow the current norms and procedures.