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The Russian commercial healthcare market is up and running.

According to research results, the majority of Russians don’t rely upon for free comprehensive qualified medical attention from the state, that is why they have to turn to commercial healthcare.

Soviet heritage. The system of free public medicine existed in the USSR has been fully outlived in the post-soviet period. Ambitious public health service reforming initiated by the Government in 2010 involved significant budget savings. The main goal of the reform was to improve the compulsory health insurance system (CHI). Along with insurance payment hike from 3,1% to 5,1% it was decided to scale down types of treatment financing directly from the budget and pay for them by means of collected dues. At the same time the doctors’ average salaries began to increase – funds for these expenditures had also to be received from the CHI budget. As a result, hospital stock in many regions began to reduce, small healthcare institutions were closed and professional services began to concentrate in large medical centers; downsizing of medical workers took place later. Today the majority of Russians don’t suppose to get full range of free medical service in case of sickness.

Stand and deliver. According to the KPMG’s Views on Development of Commercial Health Care in the Russian Federation in 2017-2019, the mentioned sector increased by more than 51 bln RUB (8,2%) – following the results of 12 months its volume amounted to 622 bln RUB. The experts forecast further increase for the short-term but a little bit slower - by 6% annually. Among the factors contributing the market growth are continuing decrease of availability and quality of medical services under CHI, reduction of insurance coverage within the frameworks of corporate voluntary health insurance (VHI) policies in large companies and complete rejection of VHI in a number of medium-sized companies. State clinics continue to shut down and the share of commercial services increases in the rest of them. At the same time, disadvantages of health care sector funding are obvious. These factors altogether lead to increase in occupancy rate of healthcare centers in commercial medicine.

Innovations not only in medicine. Owners of commercial healthcare centers are of the same view with researchers and the majority of them speak about intentions to expand business: they argue that increase in customers will be ensured due to reduction in availability and quality of state services. Business models of multi-field clinics providing all necessary medical services at a single location become more and more popular in commercial healthcare. At the same time, it is commercial sector that is able to improve in accordance with medical and technological expectations of clients, such as availability of online appointment system, electronic medical records and mobile application. Increase in prices in the sector can be the factor limiting demand on commercial medical services, however even this will not be able to reduce the market development rates.

State and business. Recently the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation initiated the discussion of new mechanism of state-commercial cooperation for budgetary healthcare institutions. The Ministry proposed to confer them a right on establishment of subsidiaries vesting real estate released during the reform in. These structures could cash on commercial services and will be controlled by the founders. Speaking long-term, this initiative can be successfully realized and improve medical services quality. However, going into action is required transparent and clear rules. Obviously, continuous reduction in state healthcare is imminently, that is why effective teamwork of the state and business on the matter becomes the most important for the whole population of the country.