Health system
The challenge
To improve efficiency of primary health care services through improvement of management and organisational development of health care facilities
The approach
High-quality primary healthcare is the foundation of an effective, efficient and equitable healthcare system.
Coordinated and integrated care provided throughout the lifecourse by a multidisciplinary team improves morbidity and mortality through better, earlier and more comprehensive management and preventive services. It saves money by reducing hospital and specialised resource use. It allows access across income brackets, across geographic barriers and in harder to reach populations. As a step toward seeing these impacts, strengthening PHC is a priority within Kyrgyzstan’s current health system reforms.
Development of primary health care requires a multidirectional approach, at odds with the “top down” methods still used in the public health system of Kyrgyzstan. We support selected PHC facilities in Osh and Chui oblasts to adapt and implement national frameworks and guidelines whilst providing technical guidance to the Ministry of Health in the development of these standards. The newly adopted “Master Plan”, aimed at optimising performance through merging family medical centres and territorial hospitals, has started its rollout and we will work with facilities to navigate this new context focusing on “person centred integrated care”.
There is a clearly demonstrated link between comprehensive primary health care and better overall health outcomes of the population. This type of care hinges on the concept of ‘person-centredness’ - providing care beyond the disease itself through coordination of wider social and health needs and involvement of the patient in their own health. It is a transformation from a traditional model of reactive disease-oriented care to proactive person-centred care, implemented from the individual patient level through to the policy level. Alongside policy and practice changes, financing plays an important role. Revising financing mechanisms to improve coverage of the state guaranteed basic health package, to allocate PHC resources more efficiently and to provide financial incentives that support PCIC activities will be necessary.
