ADAM Slatina Timiș – Position Paper: Rural Primary Health Care In Romania

The case study aims to:

– increase awareness of policy makers over the inequitable provision of basic health services to the rural population and hence over the health disparities of the rural population;

– offer a model of good practice in PHC provision in rural area;

– contribute to the facilitation of more appropriate policies for enabling a more equitable access to services of the population in the rural area.

Conclusions :

– PHC in general and PHC in rural areas represents the Cinderella or the health care system.

-The main population deprived from services is the vulnerable population in remote communities- children, pregnant women, elderly, chronic patients with little or no access to specialized services in towns.

– The human resources policies are not targeting this critical structural vulnerability- the number of family doctors, community health nurses, midwives, dentists (i.e. the entering/ securing of family doctors into the system, of community health nurses, midwifes, dentists does not represent a priority).

– More than that, in pandemic times as COVID has shown, the role of PHC becomes more important and need to be leveraged at system level by appropriate health policies.

– Innovations happen in the system through hard work of dedicated professionals; spotting these innovations and bringing their added value within the stream of health policy making is critical for an effective and fast evolution of the health care system in critical times.

– The organization of care and the contracting of the PHC services by the Insurance Houses are rigid, extremely bureaucratic, do not allow for services innovation, do not attempt to monitor/ spot the good performance and reward the good performance.

The case study is available for download here.