Health care reform in Russia: a survey of head doctors and insurance administrators

In keeping with the introduction of market-oriented reforms since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's health care system has undergone a series of sweeping changes since 1992. These reforms, intended to overhaul socialized methods of health care financing and delivery and to replace them with a structure of competitive incentives to improve efficiency and quality of care, have met with mixed levels of implementation and results. This article probes some of the sources of support for and resistance to change in Russia's system of health care financing and delivery. It does so through a national survey of two key groups of participants in that system: head doctors in Russian clinics and hospitals, and the heads of the regional-level quasi-governmental medical insurance Funds. The survey results demonstrate that, on the whole, both head doctors and health insurance Fund directors claim to support the recent health care system reforms, although the latter's support is consistently statistically significantly stronger than that of the former. In addition, the insurance Fund directors' responses to the survey questions tend consistently to fall in the shape of a standard bell curve around the average responses, with a small number of respondents more in agreement with the survey statements than average, and a similarly small number of respondents less so. By contrast, the head doctors, along a wide variety of reform measures, split into two camps: one that strongly favors the marketization of health care, and one that would prefer a return to Soviet-style socialized medicine. The survey results show remarkable national consistency, with no variance according to the respondents' geographic location, regional population levels or other demographic or health characteristics, age of respondents, or size of health facility represented. These findings demonstrate the emergence of well-defined bureaucratic and political constituencies, their composition mixed depending on the particular element of reform under discussion, for and against specific avenues of continuity and change in Russia's health policy. As Russia struggles to devise policy strategies and tactics that balance access, equity, quality, and efficiency, it confronts not only policy choices but also political challenges that look not dissimilar to those faced by health reformers elsewhere in the world.