I would like to add my mother to that list. Her public doctor said “You can either pay me 200 / appointment and I will treat you personally, or my trainees can treat you for free”.
This is a ~monthly treatment for a serious health problem, in a public hospital, in Greece.
She does not dare to accuse him to the authorities, because then, who will treat her?
>EUROPEAN HEALTH CARE is in a sickly state. In Britain more than 6.5m people are on waiting lists for treatment, up by more than 50% since 2019. Patients in Spain wait an average of 123 days for an operation, the most in 18 years. The pandemic bears most of the blame. Disruptions to essential treatments created backlogs and strained services. But even before covid-19, health care in Europe was in trouble. Waiting lists had been creeping higher across much of the continent. It should perhaps be no surprise that a study published on September 6th by researchers at Imperial College London finds that patients are being asked to grease their practitioners’ palms to secure treatment.
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>The study, by Giulia Dallera and her colleagues, used surveys carried out in 2013, 2017 and 2019 by Eurobarometer, the EU’s polling organisation. Each survey asked more than 27,000 people from 28 EU countries (before Britain left the bloc) whether they had been asked to make unofficial payments or give valuable gifts to nurses, doctors or hospitals to secure treatment in the past year. In the most recent survey almost 4% of Europeans who used such services reported that they were asked to make an informal payment. This represented an increase of around 14% since 2013, despite public perceptions that corruption in health care is becoming less common.
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>Eastern Europe had the highest prevalence of bribes: 5.5% of the population was asked to make an informal payment in 2019. But the situation there is improving. Requests for such
payments have fallen by around 8% since 2013, with the biggest drops coming from Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia. The more worrying trend is farther west. The surveys show that western Europe is seeing the largest increase in bribery, with every country except Germany reporting an increase between 2013 and 2019. Respondents in the west were 1.5 percentage points more likely to have been asked for unofficial payment by medical professionals than those in southern Europe, where the figure stands at 2.5%. Austria had the highest bribery rate of any European country in 2019; more than one person in nine was pressured by heath-care professionals. Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg all had rates above 5%.
Any Austrians care to comment? I had no idea.
That’s 4% that we now know of.
Probably the tip of the iceberg, as with so many other things we don’t want to acknowledge publicly.
In public hospitals it is SUPER common and essentially expected in Ukraine. Slip an envelope with money if you want a room or medicine or any extra attention for your relative. Otherwise they will do the bare minimum and just not really give a fuck. Its how its been done since the Soviet times…..and I cant fucking stand this system.
In private offices its way less common. Im sure it does happen, but I just have not seen or heard about it. They are usually younger doctors out of school and with more modern practices, and the main point is they charge way more money.
4%? Damn you are quite cool.
Dose giving small gifts for helping also count in this stat? A lot of people like to give chocolate, bottle of wine or something similar small to officals in Croatia if they did a exceptional job helping out. It’s technically a bribe but no really, it’s just our way of saying “thank you”.
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I would like to add my mother to that list. Her public doctor said “You can either pay me 200 / appointment and I will treat you personally, or my trainees can treat you for free”.
This is a ~monthly treatment for a serious health problem, in a public hospital, in Greece.
She does not dare to accuse him to the authorities, because then, who will treat her?
>EUROPEAN HEALTH CARE is in a sickly state. In Britain more than 6.5m people are on waiting lists for treatment, up by more than 50% since 2019. Patients in Spain wait an average of 123 days for an operation, the most in 18 years. The pandemic bears most of the blame. Disruptions to essential treatments created backlogs and strained services. But even before covid-19, health care in Europe was in trouble. Waiting lists had been creeping higher across much of the continent. It should perhaps be no surprise that a study published on September 6th by researchers at Imperial College London finds that patients are being asked to grease their practitioners’ palms to secure treatment.
>
>The study, by Giulia Dallera and her colleagues, used surveys carried out in 2013, 2017 and 2019 by Eurobarometer, the EU’s polling organisation. Each survey asked more than 27,000 people from 28 EU countries (before Britain left the bloc) whether they had been asked to make unofficial payments or give valuable gifts to nurses, doctors or hospitals to secure treatment in the past year. In the most recent survey almost 4% of Europeans who used such services reported that they were asked to make an informal payment. This represented an increase of around 14% since 2013, despite public perceptions that corruption in health care is becoming less common.
>
>Eastern Europe had the highest prevalence of bribes: 5.5% of the population was asked to make an informal payment in 2019. But the situation there is improving. Requests for such
payments have fallen by around 8% since 2013, with the biggest drops coming from Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia. The more worrying trend is farther west. The surveys show that western Europe is seeing the largest increase in bribery, with every country except Germany reporting an increase between 2013 and 2019. Respondents in the west were 1.5 percentage points more likely to have been asked for unofficial payment by medical professionals than those in southern Europe, where the figure stands at 2.5%. Austria had the highest bribery rate of any European country in 2019; more than one person in nine was pressured by heath-care professionals. Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg all had rates above 5%.
Any Austrians care to comment? I had no idea.
That’s 4% that we now know of.
Probably the tip of the iceberg, as with so many other things we don’t want to acknowledge publicly.
In public hospitals it is SUPER common and essentially expected in Ukraine. Slip an envelope with money if you want a room or medicine or any extra attention for your relative. Otherwise they will do the bare minimum and just not really give a fuck. Its how its been done since the Soviet times…..and I cant fucking stand this system.
In private offices its way less common. Im sure it does happen, but I just have not seen or heard about it. They are usually younger doctors out of school and with more modern practices, and the main point is they charge way more money.
4%? Damn you are quite cool.
Dose giving small gifts for helping also count in this stat? A lot of people like to give chocolate, bottle of wine or something similar small to officals in Croatia if they did a exceptional job helping out. It’s technically a bribe but no really, it’s just our way of saying “thank you”.