The hospitals that buy their lab tests: 119 million lei

How we counted

01One line of the SEAP export, 2021–2026

The complete national public-procurement export (SEAP/SICAP, published on data.gov.ro, open government licence) holds every award from July 2023 to September 2026 — 9,370,984 rows. We kept only rows coded CPV 85145000-7, “medical laboratory services”: 3,227 contracts and direct purchases. Nothing else is included — neither tests bought privately by individuals nor reagent contracts without a services component.

1. Total value: 118,914,933 lei (~24 million euros). One of the 3,227 rows — the Sf. Pantelimon → GRAL contract of March 2024 — has no registered value; we count it in contracts and exclude it from the sums.
2. Of the 3,227, 2,193 were signed by public hospitals and clinics (115.71 million lei): “spital”, “sanatoriu”, “maternitate”, “dispensar”, or institutes for infectious diseases/rehabilitation/gerontology/blood transfusion. The other 1,034 buyers (companies, universities, the military, health authorities): 3.21 million.
3. Hospital classification uses name keywords, not case-by-case research. Some clinical hospitals are private — the registry does not mark ownership; this limit is printed on the page.
4. The 2024 spike (57.5 million lei) rests on a single contract: Sf. Ioan, October 2024, 53,980,734 lei to Gral Medical. Without it, 2024 would look like 2023.
5. The export also carries rows dated 2021 (2 contracts, 3.78 million) and 2022 (1 contract, 5.2 million) — kept for transparency; the main period is 2023–2026.

The register

02All 3,227 contracts — search your hospital, the lab or the years

Find your hospital above — then share its list directly.

What you can do

05What you can do — patient, doctor or MP

1. Ask at admission: “Does the hospital have its own lab?” and “If not, which private lab is being paid?” — Law 544/2001 obliges every public institution to answer within 10 working days.
2. Ask for the contract list: request in writing the CPV 85145000-7 contract list (exactly as built here) — or find it above on this page. The hospital can hand it over freely: it is a public document.
3. If told there are no reagents: report to the county public-health directorate (DSP) and to the Court of Auditors (a simple complaint). Bring the contract with you — you already have it, from this page.
4. If you are a lab doctor or biologist: compare what the internal lab does with what is outsourced. If internal capacity exists, outsourcing is double payment — and the Court of Auditors can check it.

What we don’t know and what we don’t claim

06What the register shows — and what we don’t say

• We don’t know whether the hospital has its own lab. SEAP does not show internal lab staffing. We only say what was paid outside.
• We don’t know the exact scope of a contract. “Medical laboratory services” covers anything from a blood count to immunohistochemistry; CPV 85145000-7 does not say which tests, for how many patients.
• We don’t know who is public and who is private among clinics. Hospitals are classified by name; some may be private — this cannot be verified from SEAP.
• One contract is missing from the sums: Sf. Pantelimon → GRAL (March 2024, CTR, value left blank in the export). We count it in contracts, exclude it from the money.
• No claim of quality or illegality. The private labs cited are RENAR-authorised; the investigation asks for transparency, not prosecution.
• Waiting times for outsourced results — a major factor for patients — are not measured here; the necessary data (internal vs external turnaround) does not exist in the public registry.

Method and sources

07Method, sources and attribution limits

What this page says: how many medical laboratory services public institutions bought on SEAP/SICAP between 2021 and 2026, for which sums, from whom and to whom — with the complete, searchable list.

What it does not say: that any contract was awarded illegally, that any private lab does bad work, or that hospitals cannot sustain these tests. The register shows the money leaving — each hospital’s reasons are its own.

• SEAP/SICAP export seap_2023q3_2026q3.parquet, published on data.gov.ro by ANAP (open licence), downloaded 5 November 2026; queried 11 November 2026 for CPV 85145000-7: 3,227 rows.
• CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary) 85145000-7 = “services provided by medical laboratories” — the official definition.
• Hospital/other classification: keywords in the buyer’s name (spital, sanatoriu, maternitate, dispensar, health-institute) — uncertainties are labelled on the page.
• The analysis files and every printed number are generated from a single facts file; the automatic check recomputes them at every release.
• No external independent review: Codex CLI is at its usage limit until 13 November 2026; all classification decisions were double-checked in this session.
• Documented exclusions: 1 CTR with no value (Pantelimon, March 2024); rows dated 2021–2022 are kept for transparency; “DORNA MEDICAL” + “S.C. DORNA MEDICAL S.R.L.” are consolidated only in the supplier figures (11,395,520 lei); CPV limits remain.