The participants of the info session “Health Care Financing” learned about the powers of local self-government bodies in health care, ongoing regulatory changes in health care and how to make a healthcare facility financially sustainable.
This was announced by the Regional Office of U-LEAD with Europe in the Kirovohrad region.
Health care and public health in a municipality are in the purview of local self-government bodies, which are often the founders of municipal healthcare facilities.
The powers of local government include the establishment, liquidation, reorganisation and repurposing of enterprises; creation of bodies to ensure implementation of joint projects with other municipal organisations or joint financing of municipal enterprises; making decisions on approval of the cooperation between municipalities.
A prerequisite to ensuring the financial sustainability of a healthcare facility is an assessment of its financial standing, which should include an analysis of the enterprise’s income structure, including the main source of funding, funding from the medical guarantee programme, the structure of funding from the local budget and additional sources of income, the amount of funding under existing contracts, scope of coverage of the potential service market, etc.
The financial plan should ensure an increase in the profitability indicators, assets and equity compared to the targets and estimates for the current year.
As the speakers reminded the participants, local self-government bodies, within their competence, can finance local programmes for the development and support of municipal healthcare facilities, such as programmes for updating physical infrastructure, major repairs, reconstruction, local public health and other healthcare programmes.
According to U-LEAD experts, the key factors for the profitability of a medical facility are:
- business plan: helps to understand where the institution is “located”, assess its prospects and development directions, risks for its existence, any key stakeholders and their impact.
- focus on patients: puts patients and their families in their rightful — central — place in the health care system and transforms staff relations with patients into a partnership;
- quality of medical services.
In addition, the participants of the information session were reminded about the contracting of healthcare facilities with the National Health Service of Ukraine in 2023. Not only did the National Health Service not reduce the funding of medical service packages for 2023, but it introduced new ones in November: “Support and treatment of adults and children with mental disorders at the primary level of medical care” and “Complex rehabilitation care for adults and children in inpatient facilities”.
The speakers of the info session were Svitlana Tiutiunyk, Adviser on Municipal Finances and Management of the Regional Office of U-LEAD with Europe in the Mykolaiv region, Inna Sviatna, Adviser on Municipal Finances and Management of the Regional Office of U-LEAD with Europe in the Vinnytsia region, and Iryna Kondratiuk, Adviser on Municipal Finance and Management of the Regional Office of U-LEAD with Europe in the Rivne region.