Abstract
Performance of healthcare system of Latvia has been criticised for several years, due to the problems of accessibility, weak efficiency and insufficient funding. Politicians, foreign and local experts all agree upon the need of reforms to improve the performance of the healthcare system. The aims are defined in long-term policy documents, but there are no defined tasks to be made and aims to be achieved in mid-term and short-term policy. The aim of the research was to make evaluation of performance of Latvia healthcare system as well as evaluation according to “Health 2020” framework recommendations. The results showed that changes in the healthcare system in Latvia are made on ‘ad-hoc’ basis without a strategic long-term plan, and despite the fact that guidelines on the public health refear to “Health 2020”, the changes that are made and reforms that are planned are not in compliance with “Health 2020”. Work on social determinants (equity, universal coverage, accessibility) hasn’t been effective, the aim ‘health in all policies’ hasn’t been achieved and the primary healthcare due to its unaccessibility doesn’t provide expected efficiency in the whole healthcare system.
Highlights
Researchers, politicians, local and foreign experts all agree upon the need of healthcare reforms in Latvia to improve inhabitants’ access to healthcare and provide sustainability of healthcare resources.In the case of Latvia important factors are – urban and rural regional differences, high degree of income disparities and high proportion of the people who are at the risk of poverty.Since 1991, when Latvia regained its independence, different reforms in Latvia healthcare system have been made
To improve health of the society, primary healthcare based on General Practitioners (GP) was promoted to provide available and cost effective healthcare services to patients as close to the patients’ homes as possible
In accordance with the research results the main problems of healthcare system performance are in the domain of healthcare system outcome
Summary
Researchers, politicians, local and foreign experts all agree upon the need of healthcare reforms in Latvia to improve inhabitants’ access to healthcare and provide sustainability of healthcare resources. There have been reforms implemented and a lot of changes made in institutional network, normative regulations and treatment guidelines with the general aim to provide service availability to patients and to make the system more effective and efficient. The aim of the research was to evaluate health policy in Latvia according to the society needs and changes in the healthcare system performance during 2008–2015 and to analyze developed reforms in accordance with the health policy framework “Health 2020” on which health policy guidelines of Latvia for 2014–2020 are based. The aim of the research was to evaluate the healthcare system performance in Latvia and analyze the outcome of reforms made in the recent years as well as to evaluate the reforms in accordance to the recommendations given in the health policy framework “Health 2020”
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