PRIMARY HEALTH CARE REFORM IN UKRAINE: RESULTS OF THE NATION-WIDE SURVEY “HEALTH INDEX.UKRAINE”

Abstract

This paper is aimed to present how people respond to some innovationsintroduced within the Ukrainian health care system by legislation adopted in2017. It is focused on issues of choosing family doctors and on perception ofe-health by population.The survey “Health Index. Ukraine” has been launched in 2015 by theInternational Renaissance Foundation, School of Public Health of NationalUniversity of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and Kyiv International Institute ofSociology. In 2018, the questions on primary health care reform (choosingthe primary health care provider, perception of e-health) were added tothe research instrument of “Health index. Ukraine”. This paper analysesdata collected in 2018 only, because the users’ experience of choosing familydoctor and perception of e-health variables are available for 2018 datasolely. The third wave of the survey took place in June - July 2018 and overall10219 respondents were interviewed in Ukraine.At the moment of the third wave of survey, 42% of respondents reportedthat all their household members including themselves had their declarationssigned with family doctors, 5.8% reported that some of their householdmembers had their declarations signed, and 52.2% more informed that noneof their household members had his/her declaration signed. Households withchildren were more active: 52% of them had their declarations signed withdoctors. 12.4% of household representatives reported that do not plan tochoose a family doctor. 59.5% of respondents reported that they did notexperience problems in the process of choosing a family doctor.There is no significant difference in rates of declarations signing betweendifferent type of areas, education levels, and health self-assessment status.Regional difference in signing declarations (self-reported) by all householdmembers reaches up to 52.4%.The survey results demonstrate that patients want their medical recordsto be visible by different doctors (29.9%) and by patients themselves (28.9%),and only 19.8% believe the e-health instrument is not necessary at all. Thoseself-assessing their health as very bad or bad are three times more criticalabout the electronic system as those self-assessing their health as very good.