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High-tech medical centers should start operating in the fall
New high-tech medicine, for the sake of which the Minister of Health and Social Development Mikhail Zurabov endured the bullying of State Duma deputies for many months, is about to turn into a “fact”, given in sensations. This coming fall, the first patients of four high-tech medical care centers in Penza (cardiac surgery), Astrakhan (cardiac surgery), Cheboksary (traumatology) and Krasnodar (traumatology) will be able to experience the full power of these sensations. Yesterday, the opening date of these clinics was personally confirmed at a meeting of the Presidium of the Council for the Implementation of Priority National Projects in the White House. Now he has nowhere to retreat, the days are counting.The main feature of the centers is that all of them will be built virtually in an open field and not even built in the traditional sense of the word, but assembled, like a construction set, from absolutely ready-made blocks, in which even the interior decoration is completely done in the factory. These “cubes” are made in Germany, and in most cases they are delivered to assembly points by water - first by sea, then by rivers. German manufacturers guarantee that modular structures will last at least 80 years.
The average area of one center is 19 thousand square meters, which, according to Mr. Zurabov, can accommodate 165 beds and carry out five to six thousand operations per year. In total, it is planned to build fifteen new-style medical institutions, which, according to the Ministry of Health and Social Development, will increase the number of expensive operations by more than four times compared to the current level. If last year the state financed high-tech treatment for 128 thousand people, then under the new conditions it will be about 500 thousand annually. In 2007, 170 thousand patients, including 28 thousand children, will receive technically complex treatment. Increased costs for expensive operations have already been budgeted for. This year, 17.5 billion rubles will be spent for these purposes, and after the opening of the first high-tech medical centers, funding will increase: in 2008 it is planned to allocate 22.5 billion rubles from the budget, and in 2009 - 30 billion rubles.
However, in reality the situation is not so rosy. The fact is that the minister never found an approach to the medical elite, concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The academic community, whose opinion was recently expressed in harsh tones by the President of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and the head of the Blokhin Oncological Research Center Mikhail Davydov, believes that walls and equipment alone cannot cure anyone. But there are simply no personnel of the appropriate level in the regions. According to Mr. Davydov, in his work he is already faced with the dire consequences of regional doctors “overstaying” seriously ill patients in local hospitals, although they can do nothing to help them. If the national project makes local treatment economically profitable for local doctors, then they will not send anyone to the center at all, which will greatly affect the quality of medical care, the head of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences is convinced.
The minister’s supporters, who oppose the academicians on this issue, completely disagree with this assessment and argue that the rotation method is practiced in surgery all over the world, and it’s time for Russia to master it too. “The cardiac center is already preparing several visiting teams of surgeons who will operate in the new centers,” Igor Sergeenko, executive secretary of the commission of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs on healthcare and the medical industry, who oversees the new centers, told Vremya Novostey. According to him, the Ministry of Health and Social Development paid “very serious attention” to the personnel issue. In addition to the rotational teams, the localities will very soon have their own qualified specialists; their additional training is already being carried out by the Russian Academy of Postgraduate Education.