Health Ministry: Kazakhstan to halve hospitals’ number, no beds’ number cut

26 June, 2019 18:02

The Kazakh Health Ministry and the Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation scrutinized the health care system of Kazakhstan in various areas, specially focusing on the infrastructure and the hospital sector as well back in 2017. The outcome was quite anticipated as the wide spread of single-industry hospitals, which fall short in today’s health technologies, quality medical services, rentability, was observed.

With over 140 beds per single-industry hospital and around 10 such independent hospitals in each regional center, irrational location of assets such as operational, reanimation and expensive equipment hinders the entire health system’s potential. Merging coupled with expenditure lowing and wage increases, and ensuring quality standards can be a solution. So the anticipated recommendations showed up which are accelerated consolidation of the fragmented hospital sector, the merging of complementary clinics and more systemic conditions for regulating investments when further planning the whole infrastructure.

“As for systematization, under the state program we [the Ministry] have foreseen the development of a unified perspective plan, kind of a state national master plan for developing the entire infrastructure of health care”, Yelzhan Birtanov, Kazakh Health Minister, told during the international forum “Future hospital Kazakhstan: politics, investments, implementation”.

The relevant legislation amendment allowed for approval a unified plan by the Ministry of Health. With the Ministry approving the 2018-25 perspective plan, it is now possible to observe total planned investments from the state and spheres from which investments are expected, efficient resource allocation, and the public sector could see a list of projects the state plans.

“It [perspective plan] is a convenient and right managerial tool for more rational planning as we can see what facilities are needed and what not, what must be optimized. The perspective plan accordingly enables to project other resources including equipment, heavy equipment, labour resources”, he said.

Over the last few years the increasing trend has been observing in commissioning new medical facilities, but the degree of wear and tear remains.

The share of private suppliers has almost doubled and is 47%, leading to the proportional increase in investments.

According to the minister, the ideological priority goes like “more polyclinics and less hospitals,” focusing on early stage treatment and prevention. Not only increases the number of practitioners, their quality training, but that of policlinics.

“It is planned to bring into operation over 600 policlinics by 2023, both in rural area which did not have primary healthcare facilities and in cities”, the Minister stated.

Speaking of hospitals, the minister recalled 640 hospitals are planned to be transformed into 320 with the number of beds not reducing and further increasing to 400.

The minister told the degree of wear and tear was planned to be reduced to 40% from today’s 60%, and the share of private investments to be increased to 60% from 40%.

Yelzhan Birtanov told one of the issues the ministry is facing today is pocket expenses, referring to increased budget spending as the way to enhance the quality of affordability of medical services and reduce the population’s expenses on vital services.

The Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan is holding the International Forum titled “Future Hospital Kazakhstan: politics, investment, implementation” at the International Financial Center in the city of Nur-Sultan aiming at exchanging the experiences and finding solutions to planning, organizational, financial and investment issues in medicine.

Adlet Seilkhanov

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