OREANDA-NEWS. Vladimir Putin held a State Council Presidium meeting on tasks for the Russian regions to increase the availability and improve the quality of medical care.

The issues discussed at the meeting included the organisation and funding of free medical assistance, problems in the sphere of compulsory medical insurance, ensuring availability of medical care in remote areas, and staffing issues.

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PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon, colleagues,

Today’s meeting will address the challenges faced by the regions in increasing the availability and improving the quality of medical care. Authorities at all levels are giving their constant attention to resolving problems in this area.

Recently, we have made major upgrades of the legal framework as regards healthcare, compulsory medical insurance, medicine circulation, and control of smoking. We have implemented programmes to modernise healthcare in Russia’s regions.

With regard to demographic policy, we are putting particular emphasis on providing incentives to families striving to have children, and developing a system for protecting maternity and childhood. However, people are assessing the state of Russia’s healthcare based on their personal experience. There are certainly some positive assessments, but the overall picture is not that simple. Only 35.4% of our citizens are satisfied with the quality of medical assistance provided.

To implement the May executive orders, the Government adopted a state programme at the end of last year to develop healthcare along with an action plan aimed at increasing the efficacy of healthcare and a programme of state guarantees for providing free medical care.

The successful implementation of a roadmap and the state guarantee programme depend directly on the work of regional authorities. Today, during our meeting and our discussion, let’s analyse how medical care quality and accessibility are ensured at a local level. I will stress several key areas.

The first is organising and financing free medical assistance. Every territory currently has its own programmes, but there is a major deficit in their funding. In 2012, 66 regions had a combined deficit of 164 billion rubles [about USD 5 billion]. This year, the situation has improved somewhat, despite tight budgets, but it remains complicated. The total deficit in 54 regions is over 120 billion rubles. Again, last year, 66 regions had a combined deficit of 164 billion, and this year, 54 regions have a combined deficit of 120 billion.

Let me stress that the funding for free medical care must correspond to the volume of care. If regional programmes guarantee a certain set of services but the funding for them is not made available, that means there are no guarantees.

We need to work on structural changes in healthcare, increase the volume of urgent services in clinics and develop a system of day patient facilities. The medical facilities themselves are a great resource for the rational use of funding. We can and must be more resolute in eliminating ineffective management methods, when funding is directed toward maintaining costly in-patient services. And as the doctors themselves say, and you know this as well, if they were paid for results, there would be far more healthy people. This is the direction in which we should steer the healthcare sector, measuring the quality of the work based on the number of recovered and recovering patients. We must also be more active in seeking additional sources of funding for state guarantee programmes at the federal level.