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Irina Nevinnaya ‘Rossiyskaya gazeta’ of 14 December 2007: http://www.rg.ru/gazeta/rg/2007 (FEDERAL NEWS) The first results of the work on the strategy of healthcare development in the Russian Federation for 2009 to 2019 are expected in February 2008, Vladimir Starodubov, deputy Healthcare and Social Development minister, was quoted as saying yesterday. ‘The strategy must include all the key points as to organize the medical assistance in the nation,’ the deputy minister recognized. ‘This is both the financing of healthcare and ensuring the accessibility and quality of the medical assistance, and cooperated advocacy of physicians and patients, and insurance of the professional responsibility of physicians’. Those were the conclusions Vladimir Starodubov drew, based on the results of the public hearings that had been organized by the healthcare committee at the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation. The major difficulty of the work to do is to make not a declaratory instrument but a really feasible programme for the Russian medical profession development. Meanwhile, the experts have not got a definite and common stance on this yet. Thus, moving away from the ‘socialist-like’ budget financing policy and substituting it with insurance schemes have brought no substantial positive effect in Russia. Insurers themselves acknowledge it. Insurance companies in developed countries do not simply pay the job clinics do, but they are also the main tool to control, on the one hand, the quality of the assistance rendered and, on the other, the efficiency of financial expenses. Well, our insurer is actually a ‘cashier’, whom the money stream goes through; and, that’s it. The efficiency of the Russian medical science is an individual topical issue. Inequality in accessing qualified specialists, not to mention new technologies to treat diseases, equals that of Third World countries. Allocation of funds for separate stages of rendering medical assistance is another topical issue. As known in Russia, 60 percent of all expenditures goes to the hospital care, that is, once the patient is seriously ill. This figure is twice as much as that in developed countries. The first step to strengthen prophylaxis activities and to intensify the practice of ‘timing control of the disease’ making it a task for a district physician only, has informed the national project ‘Health’. Today it is important to secure and develop this line of activities. What is significant is that presumably odd problems must be considered for the conception, which is being developed. ‘Today there is not so much as an abstract of the document, so the ministry is open for any proposals’, Starodubov was quoted as saying. The transit to the practice of planning budget expenses for several years ahead requires the clear and prompt definition of the branch needs. It is especially so, as the healthcare is still behind of the GDP growth pace, despite a significant increase in the state financing of the healthcare system.
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