How acceptable are informal payments in the Romanian health care system? A Vignette study

Corruption is a wide-spread phenomenon that attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. In the health care sector, informal payments are quite common. Especially in developing countries, patients offer bribes to medical personnel in order to facilitate access to health care. In this study vignettes and in-depth interviews are combined in order to assess whether informal payments and bribes are acceptable or unacceptable to Romanian health care consumers and medicine students. More specifically, the study investigated differences between asking and offering informal payments, and the nature of these payments (money, gift or favor/service). The main findings suggest that acceptability levels vary in relation to the initiation process. Surprisingly, these are no significant findings with regards to the type of informal payment exchanged between the consumers and the providers of health services.