The Memorial Regional Hospital in Fier has become the best example of medical service in the country, serving as a model for the modern management of hospitals.
Prime Minister Edi Rama, accompanied by the Minister of Health and Social Protection Albana Koçiu, held a meeting today with the team of doctors at the Memorial Regional Hospital, consisting of specialized doctors from Turkey and Albania, and handed over the financial autonomy card to the co-directors of the hospital.
During this meeting, six other hospitals in the country: the “Queen Geraldine” Maternity, the “Koço Gliozheni” Maternity, the Korça Regional Hospital, the Elbasan Regional Hospital, the Gjirokastër Regional Hospital, and the Trauma University Hospital – received the managerial autonomy card, joining this transformation that is strengthening the healthcare system. The cards were handed over to the heads of these institutions by Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Meanwhile, the government’s objective remains the creation of 17 centers of excellence by 2027.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama:
Good afternoon! Merhaba! I want to start by welcoming our distinguished guests from Turkey, and outside of the formal protocol, I would like to invite them to come here with me.
I invited them to come here because today is truly a special day for the progress of our healthcare reform, due to their arrival. As the minister said, we have insisted that they join us to support us in a process that is the most important but also the most difficult – the management of hospitals. In fact, there are 10 managers with significant experience from Turkey, where the transformation of healthcare is one of the most remarkable aspects of the country’s overall transformation. The healthcare system, once highly problematic with many gaps, has now been turned into a model of excellence, not only in Turkey but also on a European scale.
Throughout this journey, we have realized that we have excellent doctors, highly dedicated nurses, and sufficient technical personnel, but we still lack the managers who will guide the leaders of our healthcare institutions through a phase of growth and a correct understanding of the very complex work of hospital management. Moreover, in the conditions where we have entered a new phase of hospital autonomy, management becomes even more critical and crucial.
You won’t feel far from home, like the Germans or Western Europeans, when you come here because you are at home here, and we have everything you have there. Thank you so much for coming, and I highly appreciate you. I highly appreciate your service.
I want to conclude, by expressing my heartfelt gratitude to the Republic of Turkey, to President Erdogan, who played an important role in building this hospital, and to the Minister of Health, who has been very eager to finally bring you here. Please don’t take it as military service, don’t think of it as something difficult, feel it as an experience that you will carry with you forever in your heart. Thank you!
In fact, here at the Memorial, a new journey started about 4 years ago, and it was here that the process of managerial autonomy began, which, as Albana mentioned, has already delivered tangible results, showing us concretely how important it is for doctors, nurses, and the teams who live and work daily, often for hours and without fixed hours, in hospitals, to have decision-making power over management and the authority to decide on hospital spending. It is practically a shift from a centralized, ineffective, and highly bureaucratic system to a much more agile and modern system where the primary beneficiaries are, of course, the patients.
Today, we move to the next phase, from the tested and proven managerial autonomy here for one year to financial autonomy, and I have here the financial autonomy card that I want to hand over to the co-directors of the hospital, as we have this team here. These are the first pair, and then all the others will be paired, and we will have a great Albanian-Turkish connection.
Meanwhile, we will continue our work to increase the level of interaction and to create a broader range of collaborations with friends and international allies. This collaboration here is very meaningful for the values of this mix of experiences and energies, and as we began with the Oncology Hospital in Tirana, collaborating with the Sheba Hospital in Israel, we are preparing for another very important collaboration, which I do not want to talk about in detail because we are still in the process of shaping the collaboration lines.
So, I truly believe that if that collaboration is realized, we will take a significant step forward, and we have all the possibilities, with the support of our friends and expert allies, to build a healthcare service system that will be able to meet much higher demands for quality, not just quantity. Memorial has already demonstrated through its wide range of services and interventions that this is possible, and just as the Republic of Turkey succeeded in ensuring a full 360-degree service for its citizens first and then becoming a destination for others, I believe that we can and will succeed in guaranteeing a range – if not 360 degrees, very close to 360 degrees – for our citizens and become a destination for healthcare in our region here in the Balkans.
Thank you very much once again!
