Healthcare reform approved

UKRAINE - In Brief 20 Oct 2017 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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Yesterday, on October 19 parliament finally approved long-awaited healthcare reform. Frankly, I was skeptical about chances of this badly needed measure but probably protests on the streets sped up the process. Virtually, the reform has been curtailed for some critical features like official co-financing of healthcare services at the expense of patients and change of treatment procedures. But… the core of the reform – change of funding principles – was preserved! Recall that the Soviet healthcare system presumed that hospitals are funded without measuring the efficiency of their performance. Hospitals received money just for the fact that they exist and provide some treatment. The key idea of the reform was to change this approach and to make medical doctors care about the quality of their work. So the reform envisages that money will be paid for performance, and patients will be free to select doctors. The reform is very complicated and painful. The authors of the reform assume that it will be complete within three years (too optimistic in my view). All funds for the healthcare system will be concentrated in a new state body called the National Health Service. This Service will have contracts with medical doctors and hospitals and will pay them according to the records of their performance. By the way there are rumors that Poroshenko’s cronies agreed to this painful reform just because healthcare funds will be concentrated in one place (previously, in local budgets). Probably, they see some rent-seeking opportunities in this funding scheme. In any case, even with all the concerns this reform is a big step ahead for Ukraine.