ROMANIA: Medical Insight launches website for health travel outside Romania

Medical services consulting company, Medical Insight, has launched healthtravel.ro, the first Romanian site containing information about foreign hospitals. The website targets those who want to travel from Romania for medical services and capitalizes on a developing trend on the Romanian market. Many Romanian patients ? including Romanian president Traian Basescu ? have chosen hospitals outside the country for major health interventions. Medical Insight, founded in 2010, is a company that offers consultancy to those who are looking for medical services in foreign countries.

Adriana Sarbu of Medical Insight says, “If in the past people used to go to Austria or Germany for treatment, now, according to our research, a lot of Romanians prefer Turkey for medical controls and interventions. This is a growing thing, considering that the quality of service is very high and that the prices are comparable to the ones in Romania and lower than those from the Western European countries.”

The site contains information about treatments, medical specialties and the country providing treatment, along with detailed presentations of hospitals based on the held certifications, reports of independent institutions and former patients reviews. The site also helps people who want information about health insurance or funding opportunities for treatments.

Romanian hospitals might be classified into five categories of competence from May this year, if the Romanian Health Ministry’s project is approved. The project contains the methodology for classifying hospitals, depending on jurisdiction and minimum mandatory criteria for hospitals classification in new categories. This should ensure efficiency by avoiding overlap and duplication between hospital units, ensuring equitable access to health services for citizens and lower treatment costs. Moreover, the classification based on this methodology will be used to establish protocols for transferring uncritical cases between hospitals. It will also play a key role in developing proposals for additional funding to hospitals and good planning, as well as procurement of medical equipment.

Private healthcare services operator Centrul Medical Unirea (CMU), the second largest clinic group in Romania, bought Euroclinc with a hospital and three clinics. CMU runs four hospitals in Bucharest, a hospital in Brasov and 20 clinics. It also owns half of the stem cell bank Stem ? Health Unirea in Bucharest. The company took over Euroclinic hospital and clinics from Eureko in September 2010. CMU is majority owned by investment fund Advent, and the rest of the shares are owned by founder Wargha Enayati.Despite such investment, the provision of health services in the country is still poor, which is why many people seek treatment elsewhere.

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