WORKING MEETINGS OF AUC HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL GROUPS

20.02.2012

The Project conducted a working meeting of the AUC Health Care Professional Group in the city of Kharkiv on February 16-17, 2012 with participation 31 representatives of city and town health care departments from AUC member cities from 14 regions of Ukraine.

The main issues for the discussion included the following:

1. Introducing the methodology for calculating the cost of medical assistance provided in communally-owned health care establishments.The participants recognised the importance of introducing the unified approach to the calculation of the cost of commercial services in the health care sector, legalising unofficial payments, compensating operational expenses, and giving the opportunity for communally-owned health care establishments get legal profits.

2. Expediency of holding local referenda on closing or reorganizing communally-owned health care establishments.The proposal was categorically rejected. Such a provision will mean additional expenditures for local budgets and is not in line with the requirement of the Constitution of Ukraine on inadmissibility of reducing the existing network of health care establishments.

3. Preserving the existing system of emergency medical assistance in cities.Reforms in the existing system have been considered as untimely. Stripping the existing communally-owned emergency medical assistance units may ruin the system of emergency medical assistance services.

4. Reforms in the health care systems in the cities of Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv and the pilot oblasts.The main drawbacks of reforms of the primary level of medical assistance in cities have been identified: insufficient financial support, shortage of trained physicians working in the family medicine sector, lack of financial incentives, poor housing conditions of physicians.

Following the discussions, the members of the Professional Group devised to task the Association of Ukrainian Cities experts to draft an appeal to the Minister of Health Care describing problem issues of reforms in the health care sector paying the attention to the need of drafting the corresponding laws and regulations aimed at removing drawbacks in the existing legislation.

The problem issues mentioned above have been reflected in the Health Care Technical Area Profile.

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