Health is a fundamental field for the project “State of the Nation”. The indicators describing the population’s state of health offer significant data on the quality of life and people’s physical and mental capacities to efficiently support social development efforts. Our objective is to offer a radiography of the Romanian health system, focusing especially on the critical situations, the deficiencies and those aspects that require urgent intervention or designing medium and long-term public policies. [read more]
The health system is described through a complex system of indicators, the most important of which focus on government expenditure, human resources education and training, quality of medical services and their accessibility for various groups. The critical problems of the Romanian health system are the deficient infrastructure of institutions, the low number of medical facilities with cutting-edge technologies, the specialized staff deficit. All this impacts on Romania’s development potential.
We have designed four subfields to describe and present the field: Health, taking into consideration both the situation in Romania, and the indicators used by international bodies to monitor health systems: (1) Health system and services; (2) Human resources; (3) The state of health of the population; (4) Risk factors.
Each subfield is described by a series of main and secondary indicators, that we have selected starting from the documents drawn up by the Ministry of Health and the professional associations in Romania. In the same time, we have taken into consideration the indicators developed by World Health Organization (WHO) in 2015-2018, by Human Development Index, European Health Interview Survey, as well as the models designed by OECD, Eurostat, National Institute of Statistics and other national bodies that collect data in the field of health.
Health system and services
Human resources
The state of health of the population
Risk factors
The subfield Health system and services primarily refers to government expenditure for health and the components that detail the infrastructure and the technical facilities that are necessary for the functioning of the health system and for high-quality medical assistance. Consequently, the main indicators focus on government expenditure on health and the operational capacity of hospitals, which can be illustrated by the number of hospital beds (per hundred thousand inhabitants) and emergency assistance. Considerable progress has been made in the case of the last indicator, through the establishment and development of the Mobile Emergency Service for Resuscitation and Extrication – SMURD, with integrated teams that can offer technical and medical assistance in emergencies. [read more]
The secondary indicators give further information on the factors that have an impact on the quality of the medical services and the performance of the Romanian health system. They focus on the number of operating theatres and hospital beds (per hospital), but also on the facilities and advanced technological equipment in public and private hospitals. For certain illnesses, the quality of medical assistance crucially depends on advanced high-tech medical equipment.
The subfield Human resources contains indicators that highlight the importance of the human factor in the complex activity of health care. Overall, these indicators measure the coverage of the national territory with hospitals, specialists and support staff, a critical condition for evaluating hospitals and the quality of medical assistance. Consequently, the main indicators refer to the number of physicians in the national system, by medical specialty and development regions, as well as the average monthly net earnings in health and social assistance, compared to earnings in other fields. As we know, one of Romania’s critical problems is the brain drain in the field of health, which limits the health system’s capacity to offer high-quality medical services. The secondary indicators refer to a series of significant data on the health system: the number of support staff, the number of nursing school graduates, the number of medical school graduates, but also the number of settlements without a family doctor.
The subfield The state of health of the population comprises indicators that help build the population’s general health profile: healthy life years, death rate by category of disease, self-reported use of medicines, TB country profile and disease incidence. Alongside these main indicators, the aggregator contains information and data on a series of high-frequency illnesses in Romania: number of solved TB cases (in the reported year), children with 1st degree disability (%)/prevalence of 1st degree disability in children, maternal mortality ratio (per hundred thousand live births), suicide rates by sex and age group, operative morbidity, incidence of dementia/Alzheimer patients, number of disabled people.
The subfield Risk factors refers to the capacity of the medical system to face exceptional situations (natural disasters, epidemics, metabolic disorders, etc.) and find efficient treatment for a series of diseases affecting numerous categories of people. These indicators focus on BMI, percentage of daily smokers, increased incidence of certain disorders and vaccination coverage at national level. Other indicators include: salt and saturated fats consumption, nicotine dependence among the youth, incidence of drug use, annual volume of alcohol sales, number of HIV/AIDS deaths per 100.000 inhabitants, by sex. [read more]
These indicators help us understand where to target efforts and investments to improve the quality of medical services, but also people’s access to these services, so that the Romanian health system could become a supporting factor in social and economic development policies.
It is competence that makes the difference!
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