The Minister of Health made an extremely important statement that should be on the attention of millions of Romanians who were informed about one of the most serious issues related to both the health system and emergency interventions in Romania.
The Minister of Health speaks below about a new draft law that has been submitted to public debate, and which generates extremely many controversial discussions regarding the ministry that should have control over the emergency services in our country.
"At the moment it's called operational coordination, that is, we pay them, and the Department for Emergency Situations coordinates them, that's the idea. If I make a human resources policy at the ambulance, let's leave the SMURD aside, because they always try to bring the SMURD into the discussion, I've never discussed it myself.
They discussed others who tried to accredit the idea that we are interested in the SMURD made up of Firefighters. We don't want to take orders from the ministry headed by me, we don't want to release people, we don't need helicopters, we don't have to have lifeguards and mountain rescuers. We don't want to do something like that at the ministry, obviously.
On the other hand, if I have an activity, it is a chain, a medical emergency, someone has a heart attack, an ambulance crew comes that is medically trained, they examine, if they can treat him at home, they treat him at home, if it does not take him to the hospital, to the emergency unit, and from there he is admitted to a ward of the hospital, this is the route.
If a SMURD crew comes, in most cases you don't consult them because they are paramedics, they are firefighters, they did a 3-month course, an instruction, and they take it directly to the UPU, they don't solve it at home. It is true that in the country there are several SMURD centers in certain emergency units where doctors or emergency assistants work in the SMURD ambulances.
The people are doing their job very well, but that does not mean that at the moment I have to subordinate the ambulance, i.e. 91% of the interventions to be done by the MAI, the emergency reception units that we also finance the MAI, and this draft law on organization the MAI actually expands from the exceptional situation to the everyday situation."
