Hospitality in Romanian Hospitals: A Modern Customer Experience

There is an emerging international concern about the concept of hospital hospitality as an important role in improving patient healthcare experience. So, this notion of healthcare hospitality that merges two service industries, the healthcare industry and the hospitality industry, began to attract the attention of scholars and practitioners. In Romania, based on Article 166 para. (1) of Law No. 95/2006, a hospital “is a health facility with beds,” which means that hotel services are part of the essence of the hospital as a health unit. So, the Romanian hospitals can provide three kinds of hotel services: (a) basic hotel services (for which the hospital must be accredited by the National Agency for Health Quality Management), (b) superior hotel services, and (c) high comfort hotel services, respectively. These services may be provided to both patients and third parties. However, the beneficiaries of the hotel services provided by the hospital must contribute to the welfare of the patients hospitalized in that hospital, which is why Article 233 of Law No. 95/2006 expressly refers to the mothers of underage patients and, respectively, the accompanying persons of severely disabled persons. But, since the hotel service is an auxiliary service in hospitals, the juridical literature did not take into consideration this issue. In consequence, the aim of this study is to analyze these legal provisions in the framework of medical law, to identify situations of liability when the provision of hospitality services is not carried out properly, and to provide solutions not only to avoid them but also to improve customer experience. So, the criteria and requirements relating to hotel conditions for the assessment of hospitals are mentioned in Annex 1 of the Standards for the Accreditation of Hospitals of Order 446/2017 on the approval of the Standards, Procedure and Methodology for the Assessment and Accreditation of Hospitals and the way in which all these conditions must be met is described in the Accreditation Standards Manual for the Accreditation of Bed Health Facilities of the National Agency for Quality Management in Health Care. But, the evaluation of hotel service delivery and especially the impact on the patient is very difficult to realize because, on the one hand, the Order 1501/2016 on the approval of the implementation of the patient feedback mechanism in public hospitals includes in Annex 1 a form in which discharged patients are invited to answer questions in order to improve health services, none of which refers to the accommodation conditions, and, on the other hand, the questionnaires in Annex 65 and 66 of the Order of the President of the National Agency for Quality Management in Health Care No. 8/18.01.2018 include only very general queries on some hotel issues such as the existence of a locker or wardrobe where to store the clothes and personal belongings with which he/she came, or the provision of a set of pajamas, robes, slippers, matching, and bed linen from the hospital. However, for these hotel services, Article 166 para. (2) of Law No. 95/2006 establishes the hospital’s responsibility, but without mentioning a special legal liability. That is why, in the case of military hospitals, the Ministry of Defense has tried to transfer through Article 42 para. (3) of the Annex to Order No. M 110/2009, the responsibility for the accommodation and food conditions from the hospital to the medical staff as a new form a malpractice liability.