Assessing the Efficiency of Inter-Municipal Medical Centers: Methodological Approach

A longer life expectancy is Russia’s current national goal. It requires new methods for assessing and increasing the efficiency of health care systems and medical organizations. The authors developed a new methodology for assessing the efficiency of inter-municipal medical centers as important elements of regional health care systems. The research involved a review of best practices and relied on the methods of dynamic analysis of statistical and empirical data, departmental statistics, and an integrated approach. In healthcare, quality assessment is usually based on a comparison of different socio-medical and economic indicators. In this case, the most effective systems are those that use as few resources as possible to achieve the best health indicators. The new methodological approach to inter-municipal medical centers consists of basic and additional set of indicators. The basic indicators assess the effectiveness from a medical and social perspective while additional indicators focus on three resource areas, i.e., finances, personnel policy, and informatization. The indicators should be compared in dynamics, i.e., before and after the inter-municipal medical center was established. The developed approach serves as a methodological tool of regional health policy in the regions with a polycentric regional healthcare system that relies on inter-municipal medical centers.