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Shkruar nga BIRN
Through a normative act, the government is urgently intervening to minimize the double employment of doctors in private clinics, while suggesting that the support relationship of hundreds of doctors may be in a conflict of interest situation.
Managers and doctors of the Oncology hospital at the "Mother Teresa" University Hospital Center in Tirana, along with specialists and other persons, were accused by the prosecution in June of creating an abusive scheme of transferring cancer patients to private clinics for the purposes benefit.
The abusive scheme caused a lot of anger among citizens, despite the fact that the case pointed to a phenomenon known for years in the public health system, where most doctors work, and in the private health system.
Triggered by the scandal discovered by the prosecutor's office, the government approved in early August a Normative Act, which attempts to regulate the employment of doctors by imposing restrictions on their work in the private system and accepts the decline in the quality of service in the health system and, as a result, the denial of the right to treatment of patients.
Changes to the law on the "Order of Doctors" provide for the regulation of dual employment of doctors, prohibitive measures for them to recommend patients to the private system, and stricter disciplinary measures for doctors who violate these provisions.
In the accompanying report, where the urgency of this act is argued, an "unsafe" situation for patients and doctors is described and it is accepted that the health service guaranteed to citizens as a fundamental right in the Constitution has not been provided.
"The current situation has created immediate problems in the provision of health services to citizens, such as the lack of health personnel during official hours and the postponement of consultation with the doctor," it is said, among other things, in the report published on the official website of the Assembly.
"Urgent intervention is necessary to prevent further damage to the public health service," the report adds.
The Ministry refers to the data of an administrative investigation carried out after the Oncology scandal, where the results, according to it, show "the problems of not providing medical services and sending patients to non-public structures".
The data cited in the document speak of 823 businesses that provide various non-public health services, a figure that implies a great need for doctors, who are generally borrowed from the public system.
"In these non-public health businesses, doctors of various specialties are employed, who also practice their profession in the public health service," states the Ministry of Health.
"This results in the combination of the service in these two systems, public and non-public, when it is currently unregulated, it undermines the public health service, in favor of the non-public one", she added.
In these conditions, according to the reasoning of the Ministry, there is a situation of conflict of interest, where doctors have encouraged and may in the future again encourage their patients in the public health sector to seek treatment in non-public health structures owned by them or where they work.
"This approach harms patients who may not have financial opportunities for treatment in these non-public structures and who have not chosen to receive health services in them," the Ministry of Health states.
Free and quality health has been one of the strongest promises of the socialist government, which is ending its third term.
Asked by BIRN about the responsibility of not keeping this promise, the Media and Information Agency suggested that the government was committed to improving the health system and the normative act "responded to the challenges that evolve and change with time".
"We are committed to address the challenges identified in the public health system and to implement concrete measures that will contribute to its strengthening and improvement" - says the agency's response.
The Normative Act is not an ordinary legal mechanism for changing the laws in force, but the government claims that in this case the conditions of emergency and the need for intervention to fix the situation in the system are justified.
The act has been opposed by the "Order of Doctors" as an act that kills the independence of this body for self-regulation and professional self-governance. / BIRN
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