Russia (bbabo.net), - Russians are not sufficiently informed about their rights in the system of compulsory health insurance (CHI). Often, the free medical care guaranteed by them turns out to be inaccessible, according to the Accounts Chamber. According to the auditors, it is necessary to revise the entire system of protecting the rights of patients, and in some cases, to amend the legislation.

Citizens have the right to attach themselves to any polyclinic in their region and beyond, to change the medical institution no more than once a year. However, they cannot exercise this right: if the polyclinic is not located in the same region as the insurance medical organization, then it will not be able to receive regulatory per capita funding. Citizens have the right to change their insurer under CHI, however, residents of 23 regions have no choice, because they have one insurance company for the entire region.

Patient complaints are not recorded at all. Insurance medical organizations consider all appeals of citizens to be consultations. As it turned out, most often they consult citizens about the lack of appointments for doctors and examinations, about the long waiting times for medical care.

Citizens, as a rule, turn to the courts themselves to protect their rights, although this can and should be done by the territorial funds of compulsory medical insurance (TFOMS). But in two years they have not filed a single lawsuit, said Galina Izotova, deputy chairman of the Accounts Chamber. In rare cases, the rights of patients in courts are represented by insurance medical organizations, although by law this is not within their competence. Of the 1.5 thousand claims in 2019-2020, 97% were filed by patients, of which a third were satisfied - 235 - in 2019 and 271 - in 2020.

In almost half of the regions, citizens cannot apply to the TFOMS remotely, because this is not provided for by their information systems, the auditor says.

And the results of inspections of medical organizations, according to her, do not lead to an improvement in the availability and quality of their services. "Patient complaints about the quality of medical care, as well as violation of the waiting time, with the exception of oncological diseases, are not kept. Specific tools for monitoring the waiting time for medical care have not been established," the Deputy Chairman of the Accounts Chamber stated.

The Ministry of Health and FFOMS agreed that the system needs to be adjusted. "Indeed, citizens are now not as informed about their own rights as they should be. Therefore, the system needs to be built vertically so that all its participants do their work," First Deputy Health Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy concluded.

The auditors offered to submit proposals to the government on changes to the legislation before the end of the year.

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