Press Release, 22.10.2014

The Regional Council of the Moscow branch of the YABLOKO party demands from the government to Moscow to abolish its plans on urgent reduction of the number of hospitals and the total number of beds, runs the statement adopted by the Regional Council.

The Moscow branch of YABLOKO considers such liquidation of [allegedly redundant] hospitals be a crime against Muscovites and urges city officials to regard construction of modern health care institutions as infrastructure facilities, as health is more important than roads, transport, tile paving and coloured lights on the sidewalks.

The Regional branch of the YABLOKO party in Moscow also demands that a monitoring of (forecasted) and evidence-based examination of the needs of the residents of each Moscow district in hospitals and their profile; planning and launch of construction of large multi-profile hospitals on the basis of monitoring the real needs of Muscovites; revision of budget expenditures and allocation of more funds for health care at abolishing of large-scale “aesthetic projects.”

Moscow Government adopted “The Schedule of Changes in the Release of the Property” envisaging liquidation of 28 hospitals of 2015. The authenticity of the document was confirmed by Leonid Pechatnikov, Deputy Mayor for Social Policies.

Reduction in the number of doctors has already begun, including those from the hospitals that were not included in this list.

At the same time Moscow has been spending billions of roubles on doubtful road construction, “beautification” of parks, super expensive tile paving and decoration of streets with benches and street lights.

“The priority items in the Moscow budget should be health care, rather than decoration of streets,” runs the statement of the Regional Council.

Since January 2015, Moscow will completely abolish budget financing of city hospitals transferring them into “multi-channel” financing (partially from the city budget, partially from the funds of obligatory medical insurance, as well as paid services and other non-government sources of funding).

In addition, wage pay of medical personnel is calculated differently. Earlier the tariffs of obligatory medical insurance covered each day of a patient in hospital and every medical manipulation, so some hospitals tried to ensure that patients stay in the hospital as long as possible, often without the necessary bases. In 2014 all were proposed to transfer to the clinical and statistical groups method envisaging that a hospital gets some average remuneration for treatment of a patient with a specific diagnosis. If a patient’s treatment turned out to be cheaper and faster, then the excess of the funds remains in the hospital, if it is more expensive, then the hospital loses money. However, this not very humane method is better than the trivial per bed costs, and for competent managers it is a chance to gradually improve the quality of services provided there is budget support to health care.

However, this method has been used in Moscow only as an experiment and only in four hospitals. And Muscovites have not got any information on its outcome yet.

At present there has been no research on how many hospital beds are needed in Moscow. Taking into account only permanent residents of the city is non-academic: Moscow has long ago become an agglomeration with several million unregistered people who also require health care. The Moscow Department of Health Care neither gave any justification of the number of beds required, nor the profile of treatment needed. For example, it was proposed to close two psychiatric hospitals treating almost 700 people at present.

Consequently, doctors will get more pay, but this will refer only to those who are not discharged; but the amount of work for them will increase, as well as their fatigue and nervousness. The quality and efficiency of work in such conditions is unlikely to improve.

The Regional Council of the Moscow YABLOKO notes that this sharp decline in the number of hospitals will hit all the payers of population, the middle class in the first place.