TIRANA, Aug. 3 – More than half of the country’s hospital directors have resigned following a request by newly reelected Prime Minister Edi Rama over alleged mismanagement in the country’s highly perceived corrupt health system.
Saying that the hospitals’ mismanagement adds to the people’s negative perception of doctors and medical personnel, Rama warned that doctors themselves shared part of the guilt for this unfavourable perception.
The Prime Minister compared the situation in the country’s 12 regional hospital to the one during pre-1990s communist regime, claiming that the supposed lack of proper funding cannot account for the lack of hygiene and irresponsive staff that patients and their families are faced with.
The comments came this week at a meeting with regional hospital director which caretaker Health Minister Arben Beqiri proposed by the Democratic Party ahead of the June 25 general elections boycotted.
The Prime Minister said that if today’s hospitals were compared to hospitals during the totalitarian regime in terms of hygiene and personnel responsiveness, it would result that they are not 27 years ahead but rather 270 years behind.
He went on to tell hospital directors that, while their immediate resignation was not the ultimate solution to hospitals’ problems, but only part of the solution, the full autonomy of each hospital as an end goal cannot be achieved if they lack managerial capacities. Rama excluded three Tirana hospitals from such criticism: the University Hospital Centre of Tirana, the Shefqet Ndroqi Hospital and the Trauma Hospital. The new directors in these hospitals will, however, submit to what Rama said would be a public competition with the participation of people fulfilling all the requirements of managerial competences to run for these posts.
Prime Minister Rama’s statements at the meeting with hospital directors faced criticism from opposition parties.
The chair of the health department at the main opposition Democratic Party Tritan Shehu said Rama is using regional hospital directors as scapegoats for his failure in healthcare reform.
Chair of Socialist Movement for Integration Parliamentary Group Petrit Vasili said Rama was responsible for sending the healthcare sector back 270 years, as Rama “destroyed health financing through concessions, centralizing all tenders and appointments at the Ministry of Health and utterly failing with providing free healthcare.”
Local media reported hospital directors who have chosen to remain at their posts are those appointed by the Socialist Movement for Integration (SMI), which will now be in opposition after being a kingmaker for the past eight years.
