The Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast
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June 26, 2014. Address by Oksana Kozlovskaya
at the 32st Session of the Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast
at the 32st Session of the Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast
I regret to say that today we are again talking about tragic events in Ukraine. Even though President Poroshenko declared an armistice, blood is still being shed. The south east of the country is obviously experiencing a humanitarian crisis. More than 400,000 civilians have become refugees.
The Governor ordered to create a work group to accommodate people coming from Ukraine. The region has already received more than 100 refugees, most of them are relatives of Tomsk Oblast citizens. Whereas Kemerovo Oblast has received more than 2,000 refugees. More and more Russian regions are getting involved. Government at all levels will have to find ways to approach that – evaluate needs for resources and find jobs for all those people.
June was a difficult month for the Siberian regions of Russia as well. A sudden water rise in rivers resulted in floods in more than 200 communities in Altai, Tyva and Khakassia Republics and in Altai Krai. Almost 70,000 people suffered, more than half of them were evacuated. Thousands of houses were damaged. The government of Russia has already allocated 3.7 billion rubles to help the victims of the disaster. All Siberian regions, including Tomsk are providing humanitarian help to the affected regions.
June, for Tomsk Oblast, is a month when a fresh wave of students comes upon the universities, vocational schools and colleges. The quality of future students in many aspects depends on the quality of school graduates. This year 6,500 school students took the unified national exam. 34 school graduates passed the test with the highest score of 100. Out of them 21 got the highest score for the Russian Language test, 1 for Maths and 2 for Physics.
I would like to make a specific point today about healthcare. It becomes even more important since the quality of medical professionals in many aspects is a result of their training in universities. Also, according to social studies, healthcare is still in top 3 most acute problems in Russia.
It is a well-known fact that our citizens keep raising issues of accessibility and quality of healthcare services and pharmaceutical benefits in front of the deputies. Over the last 10 years funding for healthcare in Russia grew 10 times. Only for the past 3 years more than 1 trillion rubles – 3.3% of the national GDP – was invested in healthcare modernization and reforms. A system of funding medical assistance mostly through insurance is gradually taking shape. Today, up to 60% of funds is already being distributed across the country through the compulsory health insurance system. Over the last year tariffs grew by 45%.
The essence of the reform is clear – make medical assistance of any type accessible and arriving timely in any village, town or city.
Funding of the regional program of government guarantees grows every year. Financial restrictions were removed from the most popular types of medical assistance. Scopes of MRT and other types of computer tomography immediately increased many times. For the first time expensive services to infertile women were provided at the expense of the Compulsory Health Insurance Fund. The number of medical organizations enrolled in the compulsory health insurance system grew by 10%, one out of four is private. That means that business invests in the infrastructure of those medical institutions based on government tariffs.
All those positive changes are guaranteed by the federal and regional legislation. But! I would like to remind you that starting from 2015, almost all medical institutions, including those that provide high tech assistance shall adopt the so called ‘one channel’ funding system (or the system of getting finance through the compulsory health insurance system). In this situation federal institutions will compete even harder for patients.
Municipal and regional medical institutions are in a better situation as they have been playing by the new rules since last year. Whereas, federal organizations have faced that only recently and immediately many issues surfaced at Medical Station 81, Siberian Medical University Clinics, and institutes of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.
The Oblast Administration is currently working on a model and a roadmap of changes to the regional healthcare system as part of the federal reform. Already this year 15% of consolidated budget expenditure is allocated for healthcare. On the national scale healthcare accounts for 10%. The total amount of healthcare spending in Tomsk Oblast exceeds 16.3 billion rubles. It is regretful to say that even at this spending rate we are still unable to reach the government guarantee standards established at the federal level. We will discuss it in more detail as part of our budgeting sessions for 2015.
As for the agenda, there are 40 items to be reviewed at today’s session.
