On August 21, at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman reported on the current state of affairs in various sectors of the social sphere. According to the head of the government, 28 million Ukrainians have already chosen their family doctor and signed a declaration.
One of the objectives of medical reform is to improve the quality of service delivery by primary health care providers – family doctors and paramedical personnel. Thanks to the mechanism of declarations, doctors and nurses receive payment from the state for specific services rendered, which made it possible to increase primary salaries by 2-3 times during the year.
Another influential government initiative to improve patient care is the Affordable Medicines program, which allows Ukrainians to receive drugs for the treatment of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or asthma for free or at a small surcharge. The program has already written out and reimbursed by the state 40 million recipes.
The Prime Minister also spoke about plans to launch a network of perinatal centers equipped to provide assistance in difficult cases of pregnancy, as well as a network of cardiocenters that will be equipped with modern equipment, and staff will work to prevent or respond quickly to critical conditions. By the end of the year, the second stage of the OKHMATDET state hospital should be put into operation, where they will carry out the most complicated operations, primarily in pediatric oncology.
At the same meeting of the government, Vladimir Groisman presented the next stages of the reform, which will affect emergency medicine and the professional development of doctors. New standards of emergency medical care will be introduced gradually until 2025. The main innovation is the emergence of the qualification of “paramedic”, a specialist who provides rescue medical services at the prehospital stage. The paramedic teams will first work in parallel with the drug and paramedic teams, while the retraining of the paramedics and nurses who are currently working in emergency medical care will continue.
As for the professional development of doctors – the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine adopted amendments to the Regulation on the system of continuous professional development of doctors, which provide for the application of the new principle of financing educational activities when the money for professional development follows doctors. In the new edition, the Regulation provides for the creation of an agency for continuous professional development. This agency will monitor the quality of the work of educational services providers according to clear parameters approved by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.
