KYIV. Sept 10 (Interfax-Ukraine) – A pilot project on the implementation of government guarantees for healthcare services for in-patient care, being implemented in Poltava region, has been successfully implemented, Director of the Health Department of the Poltava Regional Administration Viktor Lysak has said.

"I can say that the pilot project was successful. Our main task was to use the funds efficiently and provide high-quality services. An integrated approach was very important: all implemented changes should be consistent and phased, based on evidence-based systems, be substantiated and effective. All this to the present the time has happened," he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.

Lysak said that thanks to the introduced changes, competition appeared on the secondary healthcare level.

"If we talk about the changes, they took place on the primary market – about 80% of the population signed declarations," the expert said, adding that there are a lot of sectors (palliative care, rehabilitation, emergency medical care) that also need development.

"In the hospital sector, we just started this work. There is competition now – there are individual entrepreneurs, there is a private sector, there is a community, primary health care centers. We have undergone changes in perinatal care, we have implemented all information technologies, telemedicine technologies, and other things," the expert said.

In addition, he noted the importance of "effective and transparent use of funds."

According to Lysak, the changes started back in 2018. Some 56 medical institutions have concluded agreements with the National Health Service of Ukraine, of which 46 are former district hospitals, maternity hospitals, perinatal centers, and another 10 are regional multi-profile medical institutions.

"All medical facilities receive as much as they earned. We work within the framework of a medical subvention, but we effectively, transparently and efficiently use every kopeck. In this regard, the system is changing. If you look at the results, hospitalization in the region decreased by 4.1%, complexity of cases increased. This means that there is an understanding about the economic inefficiency of unnecessary hospital discharges," he said.

Lysak also highlighted several mandatory components for preparing the hospital sector for reform: "a team ready to implement changes, cost analysis and efficiency of their use with a clinical component, availability of an information processing system, material and technical base and partners (international, private institutions, experts, nongovernmental organizations, and others)."

In turn, Deputy Director of the state-owned institution Center for Medical Statistics of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine Serhiy Diachenko said that understanding (by the chief doctors and local authorities) of how the new model works is the most important."

"The main goal of this pilot project was to develop a technical model of the relationship between institutions, departments and the payer, in this case, the National Health Service so that the entire model could be extended to other territories of Ukraine. The most important thing is that the chief doctors and hospital owners understand what the purpose of this model is and how it works," Diachenko said.