18 November 2008 - During a two-day Mid-term conference on 6 and 7 November in Kyiv, a team of national and international health professionals presented the progress and directions of the project ‘Support to Secondary Health Care Reform in Ukraine’. ECORYS Netherlands in cooperation with ECORYS Ukraine is one of the implementing partners for this project, in consortium with EPOS and NI-CO.

Under this EU Tacis assistance programme, the Government of Ukraine has been receiving support from the EU to reform its secondary health care system.

The project, which runs till December 2009, demonstrates through experimental models set up in partnership with oblast authorities in three pilot regions, more efficient and effective ways of delivering secondary health care services both at regional level and at local facility level. Besides the pilot models the project also provides expert advice to its direct beneficiary - the MoH - at national level.

During the conference, representatives from the regional state administration and secondary health care institutions in the three pilot regions (Zhitomir, Kharkhov, Poltava) presented their findings and discussed the main challenges of the project regarding incentive structures, legal barriers to change, quality of care, human resources and health financing reform. Currently, the state and communal healthcare institutions have the status of budget facilities with very limited rights and incentives to take independent management decisions. Through technical assistance, the secondary hospitals are supported to develop their own strategic investment plan comparable to a business model approach. The reorganisation of the hospitals into more autonomous providers should encourage higher quality of care according to the demand of the population in the catchment areas.

For more information on the project please visit the project website or contact:

Arthur ten Have
T +31 10 453 86 82
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For more information on the ECORYS health team please click here.