The Kyiv City Council on April 17 approved the introduction of so-called primary medical hospitals with general practitioners to the entire city. The family doctor can decide whether the patient requires referral to a specialized doctor.
Primary
medicine centers have been operating around Kyiv since 2011,
replacing a more
disorderly system of people seeking out care wherever they could
find it.
Family
doctors are expected to be treating patients who have chosen
them. The idea is
to have doctors responsible for the health of families and
individuals, and pay
them salaries based on the number of patients they receive.
Doctors say
the idea is good, but the change will take time. Doctors who are
willing to be
become family doctors have to take six months of training.
City
authorities say not too many doctors are willing to take the
training and currently
there are more than 1,000 unfilled openings. “The program of
preparation of
family doctors is expected to be executed by 2019,” says head of
the health
department at Kyiv city administration Vitali Mokhorev.
Authorities
plan to lure more doctors with higher pay, as since July they
are to receive
additional payment for the amount of patients they serve and the
quality of
their services. The quality will be evaluated by several
criteria, says
Oleksandr Kvartalnyi, says head of the primary medicine center
in the Dniprovsky
district of Kyiv – the amount of illness, vaccination and
regular screenings of
patients, complains and other.
Kyivans 14
years of age and older can choose a doctor in their city, not
necessarily from
the district they live in. Profiles of doctors are available on http://www.103.com.ua/, along with the
list of addresses
of all primary medicine hospitals in the city. To choose a
doctor one has print
out and fill in the form from the website and bring it to the
hospital. People
who have neglected their right to be chose doctor will be
automatically
assigned the one which works in their district.
Kyiv Post
staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]
