Half of Russia's doctors face sack in healthcare reforms
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《英国医生杂志》
Moscow
Russia is to undertake a root and branch reform of its creaking Soviet-era healthcare system that could see half the country's medical professionals given the sack.
Vladimir Putin wants to reform the bloated bureaucracy of Russia's healthcare system
Credit: YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/GETTY
Russia's health service has not been seriously reformed since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, and it now has severe funding shortages. It is also, according to Western experts, seriously overstaffed.
Although healthcare is universal and theoretically free at the point of delivery, its quality is infamously poor, and many Russians are forced to pay under the counter bribes to get the medicine or treatment they want.
A bill drafted by Vladimir Putin's government seeks to change all that. It aims to shift the emphasis on to quality of treatment in an attempt to get away from the Soviet obsession with patient quotas.
Although the bill is at an early stage and is likely to be extensively amended in the country's duma (parliament) its main elements, which are extremely radical, seem likely to be retained.
If the bill is enacted, the Russian media claim some 300 000 doctors and health workers (about half the current total) would be laid off and scores of hospitals shut down in the next few years.
The legislation also envisages scrapping a third of Russia's 1.6 million hospital beds in the next decade and doing away with tens of thousands of local specialist posts. The idea is to move away from specialisation and encourage more doctors to become GPs.
The government also wants doctors to raise the threshold for admitting patients to hospital and to get people in and out of hospitals much quicker.
Rural Russia would be worst affected, with small local practices abolished in favour of larger outpatient services in bigger settlements.
Some Russian MPs have criticised the draft bill for being too vague. They say it is "chaotic and lacks clear goals."(Andrew Osborn)
Russia is to undertake a root and branch reform of its creaking Soviet-era healthcare system that could see half the country's medical professionals given the sack.
Vladimir Putin wants to reform the bloated bureaucracy of Russia's healthcare system
Credit: YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/GETTY
Russia's health service has not been seriously reformed since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, and it now has severe funding shortages. It is also, according to Western experts, seriously overstaffed.
Although healthcare is universal and theoretically free at the point of delivery, its quality is infamously poor, and many Russians are forced to pay under the counter bribes to get the medicine or treatment they want.
A bill drafted by Vladimir Putin's government seeks to change all that. It aims to shift the emphasis on to quality of treatment in an attempt to get away from the Soviet obsession with patient quotas.
Although the bill is at an early stage and is likely to be extensively amended in the country's duma (parliament) its main elements, which are extremely radical, seem likely to be retained.
If the bill is enacted, the Russian media claim some 300 000 doctors and health workers (about half the current total) would be laid off and scores of hospitals shut down in the next few years.
The legislation also envisages scrapping a third of Russia's 1.6 million hospital beds in the next decade and doing away with tens of thousands of local specialist posts. The idea is to move away from specialisation and encourage more doctors to become GPs.
The government also wants doctors to raise the threshold for admitting patients to hospital and to get people in and out of hospitals much quicker.
Rural Russia would be worst affected, with small local practices abolished in favour of larger outpatient services in bigger settlements.
Some Russian MPs have criticised the draft bill for being too vague. They say it is "chaotic and lacks clear goals."(Andrew Osborn)