LOCAL CONTACTS are what counts
National reform programmes are interesting, but local contacts are what count.
I have nearly finished our report on Opportunities in Healthcare in Eastern Europe, and again and again it is clear that, for private healthcare, success is about local contacts.
At a national level, Private Public Partnerships have still not been legislated on in Poland (expect that to change soon). But local health authorities have been negotiating and agreeing on deals with providers like Euromedic, the company which specialises in providing imaging, dialysis and now cancer treatment.
Euromedic is so confident, that it is happy to sign one year service agreements with local authorities. As one manager said: "It is all about trust, about being seen to deliver the right service for the right price."
The same pattern applies in Romania, where Bucharest has recently proved willing to pay for far larger amounts of healthcare than expected in private hospitals.
This reflects the extraordinary degree of decentralisation in public healthcare. As one contact quipped: "Poland is not one country - it is 16 voivods."
Robert Serban, head of Gral Medical, the private primary care group in Romania, says the same applies there - everything is about local contacts.
And, often, that means skirting the major cities. Only about ten of Euromedic's near 200 diagnostic and dialysis centres are in capital cities, because that is not where they are needed.
At Polish private hospital group EMC, Piotr Gerber follows a similar approach, because there is more competition and higher costs in Warsaw and the other big cities.
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