Taras Kachka: Autonomous healthcare institutions are essential to reforming the healthcare system

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Kyiv, July 20, 2015. Autonomous healthcare systems are a basic element of healthcare reform and the parliament will support automation as soon as possible, said Taras Kachka, Head of the Ukraine Reforms Communications Taskforce project during a press briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center.

More independence for the healthcare institutions involves changing their regulatory status from state institutions to state or communal enterprises, business partnerships etc. Consequently, healthcare institutions will be entitled to write their budgets independently and seek additional financing. “Every hospital must arrange its legal affairs.  It means that after making the healthcare system independent, we will be able to see clearly who runs a hospital and get acquainted with its balance. Thus, a hospital will become more transparent from the maintenance and administration viewpoint. Such a change will give a possibility to make precise planning for the amount of budget financing and facilitate introduction of innovations,” said Kachka.

The reform takes place in the context of the EU-Ukraine integration and is regulated by three bills (2309а, 2310а and 2311а). Ukrainian parliament was supposed to vote for the healthcare reforms, which the government presented during their last session. However, the parliament has yet to vote on the bills. This suspends reforms, which already take twelve months to implement. “These bills are important for launching healthcare system reforms. According to monitoring conducted by the National Council of Reforms, it is progressing slowly. These and other issues were discussed at the meeting of the National Council of Reforms. We need to launch the plan to make healthcare institutions autonomous as soon as possible in order to accelerate the reform,” said Kachka.

For more details on the progress of the healthcare system go to http://reforms.in.ua/scorecard/reforma-ohorony-zdorovya.