Success is possible in Serbia

”Who could ever have believed that a serious result could ever be made in the health care sector? You have the free state health care as a competitor! But people have dared enter the private health care sector, which was completely banned until 1989, and succeeded, Knežević said.

Jasmina Knežević comes a from a respected medical family – her father is a pediatrician and her mother a micro-biologist. Following the family tradition, she studied at the Medical Faculty of Belgrade University, specialising in pediatrics and gaining a master’s degree in pulmonology.

After working for fifteen years in the Special Children’s Hospital for Lung Diseases in Belgrade, where she was a departmental head, in 1995 she decided to found a private medical institution. After a decade and a half with a secure job in the state sector she decided to leave, in the belief that the appropriate conditions for the realisation of changes in health care, which she regarded as inevitable, did not exist.

Welcome to the whole family 

Dr. Knežević told the Serbian House of Good News, that her goal was to build up a medical institution which would welcome the whole family, from infants to grandparents, to cover the widest possible medical spectrum. There is no doubt that she has succeeded, as Bel Medic has become a modern and well equipped private hospital.

Working as a consultant in several private surgeries in the early 1990s, Jasmina grew to like private medical practice and to realise that this type of health care work, very different from that in the state sector, suits her temperament and view of medicine.

Together with her husband, film director Milan Knežević, in 1995 she decided to embark on private practice. “I saw an ad in a newspaper in which a dentist sought physicians to share excess space he had rented. We accepted the offer and formed our surgery in one room, sharing the waiting room.

“From the start we began work around the clock with several doctors”, Knežević remembers her first steps into medical private enterprise.

“My story begins in 1995 when I had a secure job in the national health service and a good position. I was departmental head in the Children’s Hospital for Lung Diseases in Belgrade’s Dedinje district with a fine career as a pediatrician pulmonologist. But the entire ambience constrained me. I wanted something more and something different and I had to realise it. To the amazement of everyone around me, particularly friends and parents, I decided to leave my job - my decision came as a shock to them. At that time no one believed that it was possible to make any kind of commercial success in health care. But I thought differently, that there was room on the market to make something different and something better.

“I decided to set off together with my husband. During the years of war we were in a dilemma whether to leave the country or remain here and try to get something done. We saw other successful people around us and believed that we had the necessary capacities, knowledge and abilities to make something out of our lives. We set off towards our goal, and Bel Medic now operates on three locations in Belgrade. We have a large general hospital and a health-care centre, a staff of 150 permanent employees, over 200 consultants, prominent medical doctors, and we are aspiring to offer to the market a new quality and new services.

“At our beginning I could not even dream that we would reach such dimensions. Nowadays we have patients coming from other countries to get something done for their health in our hospitals. I think it is a great thing for this country”, Knežević told the Serbian House of Good News.

An Ambassador of Women’s Entrepreneurship

Dr. Knežević is very active in the development of entrepreneurship in Serbia and is participating in an important European project the European Commission is implementing with the National Agency for Regional Development, the Association of Businesswomen and the Serbia Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SIEPA).
“I am happy to be a part of the project of ten women ambassadors of female entrepreneurship. We entered the European Parliament before politicians and are very proud of that fact. Our role is networking with other successful women in Europe, and in Serbia to promote entrepreneurship and by our example show that success is possible in Serbia, that it is possible by one’s own toil to get something done, to create benefits for ourselves and others, to employ people, to launch a new idea“, Knežević said.

She added that in the project ten women entrepreneurs, including herself, had received training enabling them to ‘scan’ a company, determine its weaknesses and suggest a solution, the elimination of various obstacles. They underwent demanding training lasting half a year and each of the ten mentors has been given two firms they are supposed to help. The project is still in progress, results are already visible, and Dr. Knežević is satisfied with the outcome.
She told us that women entrepreneurs now as never before enjoy the support of various associations, among the best being the Association of Businesswomen, which is 17 years old with over 200 companies in its membership.
“This organisation has a serious strength and a serious influence on many trends in the country. From it one can obtain information, contacts, networking with potential partners “, Dr. Knežević added.
She said it was difficult to start a business anywhere in Serbia, but that she was an example that survival is possible in spite of serious obstacles.

Private Health Care Should be Made Equal to the State Sector

Knežević remarked that nowadays that the attitude of the state towards the private health care sector differed from the past. Dr. Slavica Djukić-Dejanović, the Minister of Health, has an ear for problems encountered by the sector, she said.
“At the start we had absolutely no communication at all with the Ministry of Health. Now I feel better. I believe the minister, both as a physician herself and a human being, is open towards the private sector. I believe we will no longer have surprises like a law being enacted without the private health care being consulted”.

I see that there is good will to integrate us into the entire sector, she said. “The private sector is a resource of this country, it is not a resource of someone else. I often repeat this when I want to express my dismay when I hear that patients are sent to Turkey to private hospitals, while everything possible was done here to prevent the development of our private resources in health care. Together with the departure of patients to Turkey there also leaves money, a time will come when physicians will begin leaving, and we shall be all the poorer as a society”, she added.

Dr. Knežević told us that it would be best if “private health care centres were integrated in the state sector, if a doctor could write a prescription covered by the national health service, open and close sick leave and be accepted as a credible member with full confidence”.

“In many countries, even in Romania, you can use the services of a private medical doctor with your state health service card. That is the only way for a physician to be the doctor genuinely chosen by the patient; that a patent can use his card to go to a state hospital or a private hospital, to get medical treatment or surgery in Belgrade or in Subotica”.

Good News

“Good news for me would be if the private sector was placed on an equal footing with the state sector and that a patient can go to a private doctor with his state-issued  card. For us to be partners rather than two opposed parties. I am a great optimist in this”, Dr. Knežević said.

Source: Serbian House of Good News