On November 12, 2019, BISR hosted an expert round table on some issues of healthcare development in the Republic of Belarus. BISR analysts and practitioners discussed the directions for improving medicine as a social service.
On the one hand, governmental subsidizing of medical services ensures their high quality and accessibility for people, and on the other hand, it stimulates mass admissions. The main link in the doctor-patient system are polyclinics.
However, the increase in their number in the Republic of Belarus (from 1622 to 2230 in the period from 1995 to 2018) and the development of electronic medicine have not yet solved the problems of queues and medical personnel overloading.
Experts and analysts from the BISR have come to the conclusion that, along with further development of medical technologies and improvement of the social status of medical workers, an important task is to develop the patient's sense of responsibility with regard to their own health (timely preventive activities, screening, following the doctors' recommendations) and the need for rational use of government expenditure allocated to the healthcare system.
