New Paediatric Hospital is ready to offer health care to patients in a modern facility within the Mother Teresa University Hospital Centre in Tirana, an infrastructure that is a long-cherished dream of entire generations of health professionals and a long-awaited investment in the capital city.
Prime Minister Edi Rama, accompanied by the Minister of Health and Social Protection Ogerta Manstirliu, visited the new hospital complex upon completion of the project’s first phase.
PM Rama was received by the medical personnel at Paediatric Hospital to visit together the new modern environments, starting with the Emergency Ward. “The project’s first phase for construction of Tirana Paediatric Hospital has already completed, with the new hospital building complete, significantly enhancing the hospital capacities. The hospital is being equipped with modern medical devices and work is underway to make it operational as soon as possible,” the Minister of Health Manastirliu said, underlining that the investment has long-cherished by health professionals. “It primarily enhances the paediatric capacities and sets a new service standard. It is a brand new building connected to the existing facility, which will undergo full rehabilitation during the project’s second phase,” Health Minister added.
The project entails creation of comfort spaces for the paediatric patients. “This is a child-friendly hospital. Whole project has been designed to make sure that children feel comfortable with surroundings suited to the age of the young patients. This whole floor is dedicated to the emergency care services. Although the emergency care service has significantly improved in the existing building, the new emergency ward is like night and day,” Minister Manastirliu went on saying.
The project’s second phase includes complete rehabilitation of the existing hospital building. “Equipment and medical device transfer will begin immediately, with equipment slated to be transferred from the existing facility. In the meantime, we have also planned the budget funds for the purchase of new state-of-the-art medical devices and the second phase is set to begin so that we complete the rehabilitation project on the existing building as soon as possible. The old hospital building is part of the project designed to rehabilitate the paediatric hospital complex. Procedures have completed and we are ready to kick off work, but the new building will also allow us to transfer equipment and care services,” Minister Manastirliu said.
Wishing doctors and other medical personnel good job in the new hospital facility, the government head Edi Rama stated that work will go on apace to implement hospital autonomy in the public health system in the next four years.
“Health infrastructure has touched the system’s neuralgic points. Enjoy your new hospital and congratulations. We will increase the medical personnel wages by 40% in the next years, but the hospital autonomy will grant you more income as administrative and management rights will be delegated to the hospital management teams, whereas the Ministry of Health will just develop policies and the human resources management, while the rest will be managed internally and in this way we will see happening what actually has happened in Turkey and other countries, with the monthly salary rate being provided according to a performance-based system. Most interestingly is the fact that prior to implementation of the hospital autonomy, Turkey’s health system faced a serious problem as doctors, because of their low salaries, used to work also in private hospitals. With this new model introduced – Turkish law actually bans doctors from working in private hospitals and this legislation is still into force and doctors can be fired, though the law has never been enforced, because doctors are not interested in working private hospitals, because they are paid according to their performance and position. Such a model would also promote competition, while incomes and spending are self-managed,” the Prime Minister said.
