Dark future

Ural doctors fear power outages

The chief doctors of municipal clinics and hospitals in Yekaterinburg are in a panic - they are expecting a power outage and heat in the near future. In some clinics, power outages have already begun. This happened after the Sverdlovsk Regional Duma approved new principles for financing medical institutions.

Until recently, utility bills of municipal medical institutions were paid by the territorial Compulsory Health Insurance Funds (MHIF). And in some regions, including the Urals, everything was built on a system of mutual offsets: the fund provided health insurance to power engineers, and they “forgave” debts to hospitals and clinics for electricity. After the introduction of the unified social tax, such a scheme was declared illegal.

Deputies of the Sverdlovsk Regional Duma were among the first to react to the innovation. They decided that from now on Yekaterinburg should take on this financial burden. According to Arkady Gornostay, deputy executive director of the territorial Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund, in a critical situation the fund is ready to help Yekaterinburg hospitals, but only if there is extra money in its account. “If the tax authorities manage to collect a unified social tax, we can help. If not, all issues will have to be resolved by the city, this is now not our problem at all,” says Mr. Ermine.

The mayor of Yekaterinburg, Arkady Chernetsky, claims that the city treasury will not be able to bear such expenses. And he accuses the regional authorities of adopting the new resolution after the city had approved its budget. “I assure you, the city will sue in all instances, but will not pay any money. There is simply nowhere to get them,” said Mr. Chernetsky. To this threat from the mayor, representatives of the regional government respond that city officials could more intelligently distribute expenditure items from the Yekaterinburg budget.

The clarification of relations between officials at different levels has not yet affected the situation in hospitals. “I don’t even know how to behave in this situation,” says Igor Ilezev, chief physician of city hospital No. 3. - The fact that our heat can be turned off at any moment is a very real threat. We think about it with horror.”

The power engineers had to reassure the chief doctors, who are the ones who scare them. “We, of course, will not allow any serious power outages that could harm patients in one way or another,” said Elena Ilyina, a representative of the directorate of Sverdlovsk City Electric Grids. “But we also cannot promise that at some point the switches in hospitals will not be turned off.” There is a resolution of RAO UES of Russia, according to which we must work more actively and strictly with non-payers.”

Sergey DIDKOVSKY, Ekaterinburg