Deep Dive into the Healthcare System and Medical Device Market in Romania

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

The Healthcare System:
- Romanian healthcare is sustained through a compulsory employee-employer and state funded organization, reimbursed regionally via insurance funds.
- Romania suffers from several structural and financial weaknesses, that have led to an underperformance and under-spending on healthcare, which is vastly reflected through many negative and low health status indicators and treatment outcomes.
• There are understaffed facilities due to a vast emigration of medical staff and shortages of near-by healthcare units (including pharmacies).
• Romanian healthcare expenditure in 2015 as a percentage of GDP is 5.6%. In terms of GDP per capita, Romania has one of the lowest expenditures on healthcare in Europe, equivalent to €435.
• There are roughly 1.4 public hospitals per 100,000 population, and 588 hospital beds in total per 100,000. The hospital occupancy rate is 61, and the average length of stay is 5 days.

Reforms:
Some of the current reforms address the following:
- Building community healthcare
- Rationalizing hospital networks
- Strengthening ambulatory care
- Revising the wage system for medical professionals
- Introducing screening programs for non-communicable diseases
- Enhance county emergency hospital equipment

The Markets:
- The medical equipment market in Romania has positive growth prospects in the coming years, as the demand nationwide in both the private and public sector is expected to increase, and due to Romania making an effort to raise healthcare standards to EU levels.
- Approximately 90% of medical devices and equipment is imported.
- The combined markets for pharmaceuticals, medical devices, equipment and disposables is valued at €3.8 bn in 2015. Growth is estimated to average around 10% for the market as a whole.
- The private sector over the last 6 years has pushed the growth of the medical device market the most in Romania.

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