Optimization of medical care in regional health care: perspectives and barriers

Abstract

The perspectives of Russian health care in the transition to personalized medicine are realized in the formation of an innovative digital health care system. Forming with the use of digital technologies the accessibility of health care provides enormous social advantages in regional conditions and assumes a qualitatively new level of regional health care system. The problems of the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring isolation, quarantine and social distancing and characterized by the formation of trends of social “atomization”, accelerated the dependence on digital health care, and served as a “catalyst for the development and implementation of a wide range of remote monitoring technologies in health care delivery”. However, the digitalization process is “objectively slow” in Russia. The research establishes a high differentiation of digitalization of regional health care systems in the Russian Federation. The implementation in regional health care of digital technologies, which have a high potential for improving the efficiency of the health care system, is limited by institutional barriers. The article presents a typology of institutional barriers to the digitalization of the regional health care system: on federal level [legal barriers, organizational and managerial (logistical) and technological barriers], regional level (financial barriers), level of medical organizations and users (medical staff and patients) [behavioral barriers, organizational and managerial (logistic) and technological barriers]. Modern health care is experiencing large-scale digital technology inclusion, which can radically change the health care system by determining the accessibility and quality of medical care. However, the provision of cost-effective and quality health care initiated by the regional health care digitalization process is limited by institutional barriers at the federal, regional, medical organization and user levels.