Six days of delays at Floreasca: patient with fractures operated on privately for 8,000 euros

Adina Popescu was admitted to the Floreasca Clinical Emergency Hospital in Bucharest at the beginning of August, with fractures to her hands and legs. She remained there for six days, awaiting surgery, without receiving a clear date for the procedure.

According to the patient, the operation was repeatedly postponed without any concrete explanation from the medical staff. "I waited all day without eating or drinking water, as the procedure requires, until late at night, when I was told the operation was being postponed. And it kept being pushed back from one day to the next, with no predictability whatsoever. Nobody told me: 'Look, we can't operate on you now because...' or 'It will be next Wednesday because...'" the woman recounted.

"I felt I wasn't being helped"

The patient said she experienced the situation as an injustice, given that she had contributed to the healthcare system for 25 years. "It outraged me, because it seemed somehow unfair that an ordinary patient and citizen who had contributed to the healthcare system for 25 years should end up in a desperate situation like this, where they just don't help you. That's what I felt — that I wasn't being helped," she said.

The woman particularly criticised the lack of communication between doctors and patients: "At no point did I get the sense that the doctors wanted to communicate with patients. We were just cases."

She explained that the information she received about scheduling her operation was vague. The surgeon who was due to operate on her had reportedly told her that it was not his decision to determine the order in which patients entered the operating theatre. "The surgeon, who seemed to me a very decent doctor, said it wasn't his call. That was basically it — he only performs the operations, he doesn't decide who goes into the theatre, and I never understood at any point what the actual priorities were," the patient recounted.

"The conditions in the hospital were very poor"

From the third day of her admission, the woman said she began to consider the option of a private hospital, also due to the conditions on the ward. "The conditions in the hospital were very poor. It was that August heatwave, 40 degrees. There was air conditioning in the ward, but it wasn't working," she said.

After six days of waiting, the patient decided to leave Floreasca Hospital and have the operation at a private clinic, where the procedure cost 8,000 euros. She was able to cover the cost because she had recently sold her flat in Bucharest: "I hadn't yet bought anything else. I probably wouldn't have had that money otherwise — I didn't have it set aside," she said.

Following this case, the manager of the Floreasca Clinical Emergency Hospital requested an explanation from the doctors who had been responsible for the patient's care.