Promises against signature

Mikhail Zurabov briefed the President on the intricacies of DLO

The Supplementary Drug Supply Program (DLO), which has caused so many problems for officials and worries for beneficiaries, will radically change next year. There will be no trace left of the former negative image associated with queues at pharmacies and billions of dollars in debt. And for the remaining six months, DLO will behave quietly and modestly. After all, money for the purchase of drugs is allocated with a reserve - the program reserve will amount to 33 billion rubles. Yesterday, Minister of Health and Social Development Mikhail Zurabov made such a promise to President Vladimir Putin. The head of state decided to devote considerable time to discussing a private issue of one particular industry before putting his signature on the amendments to the law “On the Federal Budget for 2007.” In accordance with this document, the money saved by the Russian Pension Fund is 10 billion rubles. -- will be spent on partially covering the debt for 2006 to DLO program suppliers and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Also, the document signed by Mr. Putin provides for the centralized purchase of expensive drugs for the treatment of a number of serious diseases in the amount of 47.9 billion rubles. between 2008 and 2009.

In order to somehow justify the “check” signed by the president, Mr. Zurabov first introduced him to all the intricacies of the work done by the Ministry of Health and Social Development to improve the benefit program. Thus, the minister told Vladimir Putin that there are 52 thousand people living in our country whose diseases require extremely expensive drug treatment. “The minimum expenses for this category will be 16-17 billion rubles,” the minister said. This is a big burden on the DLO program, which, by and large, is designed to help not the sickest citizens. Therefore, it seems rational to move expensive drugs into a special subroutine. “In 2008, they (medicines for seriously ill beneficiaries. - Ed.) will be financed from the federal budget under a separate scheme,” said Mikhail Zurabov. He assured the head of state that beneficiaries themselves, suffering from severe and “expensive” pathologies, fully supported this measure. The Ministry of Health and Social Development conducted relevant negotiations with public associations of patients.

Federal officials hope to verify every single person’s lists of applicants for expensive drugs with patient associations and regional authorities. “We have agreed on mechanisms for creating lists of those who will receive medicines under this program, and are now finalizing the control system to make sure that these medicines, one package of which can cost 100-150 thousand rubles, reach patients ", Mr. Zurabov emphasized. Let us remind you that it is precisely the abuses in prescribing drugs to beneficiaries, including the unreasonable prescription of the most expensive drugs, that the Ministry of Health and Social Development considers one of the main reasons for the “ruin” of the DLO program last year. During inspections, the Inspection Department of the Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare and Social Development (Roszdravnadzor) regularly uncovers cases of overwriting, unjustified prescription of medications, and incorrect documentation.

Thanks to a modern computer system, which was fully established several months ago at the Federal Compulsory Health Insurance Fund (FFOMS), the prescription of drugs and their dispensing from pharmacies can now be monitored in real time in all regions. The computer program itself signals the appearance of suspicious recipes. The data obtained is analyzed by Roszdravnadzor inspectors. As a preliminary analysis shows, most often violations occur when beneficiaries are hospitalized in a hospital. In theory, at this moment the patient should be provided with drugs not according to the DLO program, designed for outpatient services for beneficiaries, but from the funds of the medical institution. Inspections revealed that hospitals often receive funds for medicines, but they do not reach patients. And this also leads to overspending of the “preferential” program. In addition, Roszdravnadzor experts discovered a direct relationship between the number of violations in a region and its distance from the center. For example, in a psychoneurological boarding school in the Smolensk region, violations amounting to more than 5.5 million rubles were detected, and in one of the clinics in the Primorsky Territory - in the amount of 81 million rubles. Now territorial health authorities have to bring to the attention of their medical wards that “everything is visible from above.”

Galina PAPERNAYA