Health Minister on Friday announced the launch of a special telephone line where patients, doctors or witnesses of corruption cases in a medical unit or pharmacy can call and disclose any potential breach. The TelVerde dispatching centre is administered by the General Anti-corruption Direction (DGA).
“Today we are launching the anti-corruption telephone line in partnership with the Interior Ministry’s General Anti-corruption Direction, with the Prosecutor’s General upon the High Court of Cassation and Justice and the National Anti-corruption Directorate. Any Romanian will be able to notify corruption cases in the healthcare system on the phone, from cases of conditioning the medical act up to fake hiring contests or fake public procurement. The dispatching centre will be managed by the DGA and they will also get the patients’ notifications received through the new monitoring mechanism of the patients’ satisfaction. At the same time, the IT GovHub is working on a notification portal where the medical staff and patients will be able to anonymously report irregularities in the system,” said Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu.
The phone number where citizens can denounce those corruption cases in hospitals is 0800.806.806 and is free any charge in all phone networks.
“Every week, since I have been Health minister, I have Okayed sending a potential corruption case to the prosecutor’s office, DNA or other investigation body. I discovered a system strangled by groups of interests, a cobweb choking the country, while on the web, here and there, the feudal spiders are making a business out of the patients’ life and their health. In order to clean the system, we turned on the light to bring transparency at all levels. There are 150 corruption cases pending at the DNA, but we cannot rely only on prosecutors to solve all our problems. That’s why we are also counting on the patients and on the medical staff to help us keep the light on and to signal corruption cases,” the minister argued.
Besides TelVerde, citizens can also disclose corruption cases in the healthcare system directly to the Health Ministry by email at presa@ms.ro or by a written notification filed at the ministry’s HQs or sent by mail.