Abstract
Aims: To evaluate the Russian Federation healthcare providers’ websites compliance to legal requirements on availability of patient-oriented medicines supply information and compare the evaluation results between public and private healthcare facilities.
 Study Design: Cross-sectional study.
 Place and Duration of Study: The evaluation of compliance to legal requirements to medicines supply information on public and private healthcare providers’ websites available on the Internet was conducted in September 2021.
 Methodology: The study included a simple random sample of 66 websites of Russian healthcare providers containing two groups: public (n=33) and private (n=33) healthcare facilities’ websites. The compliance evaluation was performed by checking the availability of 4 medicines lists on the websites: (1) essential medicines list; (2) list of medicines for the most expensive chronic diseases to treat; (3) list of medicines that are prescribed only by shared decision of healthcare facility medical commission; (4) list of medicines that are dispensed for certain social groups with no charge or with 50% discount in outpatient care settings.
 Results: The difference of availability of the first list was 90.9% (95% CI 77.7%–97.4%) vs. 33.3% (95% CI 19.2%–50.3%) on public and private healthcare facilities’ website, respectively, P<.001. The difference of that in the second list was 42.4% (95% CI 26.8%–59.3%) vs. 15.2% (95% CI 6.0%–30.1%), P<.028. For the third no statistical significance was revealed (P>.05). For the fourth list the difference was 66.7% (95% CI 49.7%–80.8%) vs. 21.2% (95% CI 10.0%–37.2%), P<.001.
 Conclusion: It is required to improve the supervision approaches for both public and private healthcare facilities for better patient-oriented medicines supply information provision. The problem may be solved by the implementation of a centralized government policy repository with regularly updated lists, requirements, and best practices.
Highlights
The medicines supply is considered as an important component of healthcare both on global and regional levels [1,2]
Place and Duration of Study: The evaluation of compliance to legal requirements to medicines supply information on public and private healthcare providers’ websites available on the Internet was conducted in September 2021
The healthcare policy in the Russian Federation only allows health professionals who are employed by healthcare facilities to provide healthcare services, and healthcare providers in this study are viewed only as entities, not individuals
Summary
The medicines supply is considered as an important component of healthcare both on global and regional levels [1,2]. The availability of orphan medicines to treat rare diseases is of primary importance [3,4]. The first Essential Medicines List (EML) was published by WHO in 1977. Since 2007, WHO has been publishing and updating the Essential Medicines List for Children (EMLc). WHO EMLs are the basis for the development and improvement of regional and national policy approaches to the medicines supply. Many countries, including the Russian Federation, publish their own lists of essential medicines in accordance or at least somewhat similar with current versions of WHO EMLs [6]
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