Round Table Press Meeting «How can the organization of hospital care be improved»

28 October 2008 – at the Ministry of Health the Project held a Round Table Press Meeting on the topic «How can the organization of hospital care be improved». The meeting participants were: the Director of Healthcare Organization Department of MoH Ms. Myroslava Zhdanova, Project Director Ms. Oxana Abovskaya, Head of the Financial-economic and HR Department of the Healthcare Department of Poltava Oblast State Administration Ms. Alla Bredikhina, Deputy Head of the Healthcare Department of Zhytomyr Oblast State Administration Mr. Olexandr Torbas, Team Leader Ms. Greta Ross, international experts of the Project Mr. Eero Linnakko, Mr. Bela Kaunzinger, Mr. Luca Brusati, national health policy and legal project expert Mr. Volodymyr Rudiy, PR expert of the Project Ms. Natalia Louchsheva, as well as journalists – Ms. Nataliya Lytvynenko («Sil’s’ki Visti»), Ms. Nataliya Rotay («Ukraina Moloda»), Ms. Vira Fazliyeva («Vashe zdorovya»), Mr. Andriy Val’kov («Apteka»), Ms. Tetyana Pomazanova («Visnyk Chornobylya»).

The Round Table Meeting was chaired by Ms. Myroslava Zhdanova, who opened the Round Table by  stressing the importance of organizing such events with the involvement of the media and also spoke about the state policy regarding secondary healthcare.

The Project Director Ms. Oxana Abovskaya spoke of the need for a systematic approach to healthcare system reform and underlined the importance of endowing the healthcare facilities’ managers with wider authority for more flexible decision making.

The national health policy and legal project expert, Mr. Volodymyr Rudiy described the situation that exists in the secondary healthcare of Ukraine at the moment. He underlined the importance of achieving secondary healthcare reform due to the fact that it is this sector of healthcare that consumes the largest part of healthcare resources; hence reform of this sector takes priority in order to improve the economic efficiency and rational usage of financial, HR and material-technical resources.
Mr. Rudiy also spoke to the mass media representatives about the differences in secondary healthcare organization in European countries and in Ukraine. In particular, he described the organisation of hospital services into functional networks (‘okrugs’), and the development of hospital ‘corporations’ (in UK,‘trusts’), a system for managing acute care services increasingly found in the EU, which allows more coordinated strategic management with the aim of improving the quality of healthcare and the more rational use of scarce resources. The integration of medical and social care, together with the pooling of resources under one ‘umbrella’ enables costs to be managed more effectively,

Ms. Alla Bredikhina and Mr. Olexandr Torbas informed the mass media of the current state of changes that are introduced in Poltava and Zhytomyr oblasts with the Project’s support. In particular they spoke about the main approaches developed within the framework of the Project in order to ensure the improvement of healthcare quality, including the optimization of the healthcare facilities network. Ms. Alla Bredikhina said that Poltava oblast has been actively participating in the implementation of the Project.  An analysis of bed usage in the oblast hospitals showed this to be inefficient The establishment of public inter-rayonal non-profit hospital corporations would enable more efficient usage of available resources. Ms. Bredikhina agreed that the establishment of inter-rayonal hospital corporations would need to be preceded by the transformation of the hospitals into public non-commercial communal enterprises.

Mr. Torbas presented the oblast master planning for dividing Zhytomir oblast into service networks but pointed out that not all representatives of the local authorities in Zhytomyr oblast understand the advantages of establishing public hospital corporations.

The European experience of secondary healthcare planning in the UK, Finland and Germany was presented by Ms. Greta Ross, Team Leader, and international experts Mr. Eero Linnakko and Mr. Bela Kaunzinger.

After the reports, the discussion took place regarding the issue of ensuring the quality of medical services in hospitals and possible ways of improving it. The journalist from «Sil’s’ki Visti» Ms. Nataliya Lytvynenko asked if there were medical services provision standards in Ukraine and how would the transportation issue be solved for the population of the rayons, which would become the members of hospital corporations. One solution could be to reinvest funds saved from reconfiguring hospital services more efficiently into ambulance transport and better quality local services. There followed a general discussion of aspects of hospital care in EU countries and how lessons learned from reform in those countries could assist reform in Ukraine.