Experts Discuss Competences for Efficient Management in Healthcare at Gaidar Forum

An expert discussion of the current issues related to professional training in the field of public healthcare was held within the framework of the permanent interactive discussion platform Viable Healthcare.

Veronika Skvortsova, Minister of Public Healthcare of the Russian Federation; Dmitry Butashin, Vice-Rector in RANEPA; Abel Aganbegyan, RAS Academician and Head of the Department of Economic Theory and Politics in RANEPA; Aleksey Svet, Chief Medical Officer of Pirogov First Municipal Clinical Hospital; Elena Yashina, Deputy Head of RANEPA Center for Information Technologies in Administration; and other members of the international academic and business communities were among the experts of the event. Andrey Sharonov, Rector of Skolkovo Moscow School of Management, moderated the discussion. Minister Skvortsova opened the discussion and said that in the current period of development of our country, raising quality of administration in public healthcare is assuming prominence. She also emphasized that the system for training of future professionals who will be administering healthcare needs to be reviewed, and she talked about the importance to form a national, not a state healthcare system. Ms. Skvortsova added that the traditional system of professional training is still being used in Russia, and in parallel, a system for professional training of managers based on non-medical education exists. A project of the unified standard for professional training in public healthcare is also being drafted. Federal RANEPA program helped in its development, and it enabled determining the essential components for training of a future professional.

Examples of participation of business in raising the quality of professional education for the medical field were presented by Elizabeth Fowler, Vice-President and Global Head of Health Policy at Johnson & Johnson. This company invested into a program in a business school in France as well as a program for professional training of managers in healthcare, with Russian professionals recently joining it.

When discussing the importance of public and private partnership in healthcare, Alberto Colzi, Vice President for EEMEA Operations in AbbVie, emphasized the importance of maintaining the current amount of investments against the background of the complicated economic situation. “In Russia, this is investment for a long term,” he said, adding that not only national health depends on them, but also the opportunity to diversify the economy. Mr. Colzi also said that redirecting investment to early disease detection and their prevention is essential.

Getting back to the competences required from managers, Mrs. Yashina emphasized proficiency in law, current regulations and bylaws. “We need to train not only chief medical officers, but also cynical economists. It should be clear that investment into public healthcare is literally an investment,” Larisa Popovich, Director of the Higher School of Economics Institute of Healthcare Economics, talked about financial ‘literacy’ of managers. “In management, the most important thing is goal setting. We say that there is no goal in administering, but in medicine, a goal-based approach is important as the question is life or death,” Mr. Aganbegyan added.

At the end, Minister Skvortsova expressed her confidence in the concept that a person who has been trained in all complications related to financing should perform administration of a medical institution. She also talked about some medical and paramedical criteria related to service rendering and the necessity to have a person responsible for the list of medications and introduction of innovative ones among such managers. Minister Skvortsova invited the participants of the discussion to submit their proposals to the respective Ministry and to participate in shaping the education concept in the medical industry. This event is organized annually by RANEPA and the Presidential Executive Office. ACIG Group of Companies is the regular operator of the platform.

Official website of the platform: www.viablehealthcare.ru