The private healthcare sector must be treated as a strategic partner of the national system, with public policies ensuring fair, predictable rules and patient financing regardless of ownership, Adrian Badescu, president of the Medical Enterprise Employers Federation (FEPAM), said on Tuesday at the organization's official launch.
"We want to unite Romanian medical entrepreneurs - from dentistry and hospitals to laboratories, pharmacology and psychology - and ensure fair treatment for all market players. We aim to be a dialogue partner for the Health Ministry, Parliament's Health Committees and the National Health Insurance Office. In a democratic society, collaboration must prevail over conflict," Badescu said.
He warned that marginalizing private providers "means affecting patients' health", stressing that discriminatory administrative treatment limits access to care, creates economic distortions and risks losing strategic opportunities for Romania.
Badescu noted that the private sector already provides care for millions of taxpayers and insured patients annually. "The private health sector is no longer a marginal actor or a luxury alternative. It is a structural component of the National Health System. Yet public policies still treat it as a tolerated annex, not a strategic partner," he said, presenting a memorandum outlining unfair practices, their impact on patients, and examples of international best practice, as well as the concrete directions for necessary reform.
Badescu pointed out that Romania consistently ranks last in the EU for public health spending per capita, despite having internationally recognized doctors. "The paradox is that we have highly trained doctors but operate with some of the lowest public financing in Europe. The result is an overcrowded public system under constant pressure, complemented by a private sector that already supports millions of patients annually. At the same time, the demand for medical services is growing, the population is aging, the incidence of chronic diseases is high, and the medical human resource is under pressure."
He emphasized that private providers absorb much of the strain in outpatient care, family medicine, imaging, laboratories, dentistry and hospitalization, but operate "in a hostile and unpredictable environment, characterized by chronic underfinancing".
Among the sector's main problems, Badescu cited tariffs below the real cost of medical services, capped reimbursement volumes, limited access to contracts with the National Health Insurance Office, legislative instability, excessive bureaucracy, dependence on unstable IT systems, lack of investment support, and the absence of a national strategy integrating private healthcare.
Discrimination, he argued, harms patients rather than investors. "Those directly affected are patients with chronic diseases, oncology patients, and those from small towns. Blocking the private sector leads to long waiting times, fragmented access, extra costs and lost therapeutic opportunities. In countries like Turkey and Austria, the private sector is part of the solution, supported by clear policies and balanced funding. Romania has the human, technological and infrastructure resources necessary to become a regional hub of medical services, but it does not yet benefit from the appropriate political framework," Adrian Badescu explained.
FEPAM is calling for equity and predictability "for the benefit of all actors in the system, and especially patients".
The federation launched Tuesday in Bucharest brings together over 400 members from the private medical sector and is affiliated with the National Confederation for Women's Entrepreneurship (CONAF).
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