Fady Chreih (Regina Maria): The market for health prevention packages in Romania might double by 2020; We have 10,000 retail clients

Fady Chreih, CEO of Regina Maria, the private healthcare services provider, says that there are 1 million health prevention packages on the Romanian market at this moment and that this figure could climb to 2 million in the next four years, as demand will continue to remain high and companies in smaller cities across the country will cover such packages for their employees.

“I believe that in 2020, if we look, the market can reach 2 million health prevention packages, it can double, due to three main reasons: Firstly, there is a growing number of active workers in Romania and we are all hoping that from a macroeconomic perspective to see more employees active in Romania. Secondly, we see cities that are catching up that have the unemployment rate around 2,3,4 percent, and there are foreign investments or Romanian companies that are investing more. This means that the market is becoming more professional, transforming itself and I can mention Brasov. In 2010, there weren’t any health prevention packages in Brasov. Right now, all the 500 largest companies here, not only multinational ones, provide these packages. (…) An opportunity we are exploring right now is that of SMEs. This year, we were the first company providing products specifically for small and medium enterprises in Romania and the pilot project will end next January. There are hundreds of thousands of companies and only tens of thousands have these health packages,” said the head of Regina Maria, which has been operating on the local market for 20 years.

Chreih added that Regina Maria is continuing to focus on growth after growing the business organically by 20 percent in the past three years.

“This year, we will have a 20 percent organic growth, which will be further supported by the acquisitions we did,” said the executive.

The CEO explained that the company has also started to sell health prevention packages and that 10,000 people, mainly in Bucharest paying for this service.

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“We are looking at this area because we think it has a lot of potential. There are either employees that either had this product and don’t have it anymore. Practically, Romanians have known the private healthcare services with the help of the subscription package,” said Chreih.

In total, the company currently manages 365,000 subscription packages that generate around 40 percent of its business.

Employees in IT&Telecom, Finance&Insurance, Automotive are interested in health prevention, says Regina Maria study

The healthcare services provider has published the first results of a study based on the internal data of Regina Maria regarding its beneficiaries.

One of the conclusions was that employees that have a health prevention package are using medical services 2.5 times more than those who don’t have this kind of subscription product and go to the doctor only when they are sick.

Regina Maria said that it registered higher demand from clients that are in the following industries: IT&Telecom (8 percent of total entries on corporate medical services), Finance & Insurance (3 percent) and Automotive (2 percent).

Chreih said that one third of the corporate clients have been diagnosed with chronic disease during investigations at Regina Maria.

Ovidiu Posirca