Improving the quality of human rehabilitation services is the key to creating the strongest rehabilitation system in Europe. This was emphasised by Minister of Health Viktor Liashko during the National Forum of the Rights of People with Disabilities “On the Way to the EU”.

“Rehabilitation is our top priority. This year, more than 100,000 patients have already received free inpatient rehabilitation care, and 230,000 have received outpatient care. The state paid four billion hryvnias to medical institutions for this. Currently, we continue to work on implementing the concept of developing a rehabilitation system in the healthcare sector. To improve quality, the Ministry of Health initiated the development of seven rehabilitation centres of excellence. These are medical institutions that already demonstrate excellent results and apply best practices. They are centres of invaluable experience. They use advanced techniques and train specialists from multidisciplinary rehabilitation teams. In cooperation with the leading European rehabilitation centres, more than 700 Ukrainian specialists from 35 medical institutions have already completed internships in foreign clinics. The Ministry of Health will continue to actively promote and support this in every way possible, because this is the modern, high-quality medicine we are working to build,” said Viktor Liashko.

The forum discussed the significant changes that had taken place in the field of rehabilitation in the Ukrainian healthcare system. One of the key achievements was the introduction of a patient-centred approach to the provision of rehabilitation services. It is based on the multidisciplinary work of specialists and is focused on the individual needs of the patient. It is important that the rehabilitation system has come closer to European standards and meets the recommendations of the World Health Organisation.

The rehabilitation system development concept envisages that each cluster and multidisciplinary supercluster hospital should have an inpatient rehabilitation unit. There are 221 of them in total. Currently, they are already operating in 70% of these medical institutions (154 units).

In total, thanks to the support of the state and donors, the Ministry of Health managed to purchase rehabilitation equipment for 194 medical institutions for a total amount of over UAH 160 million. In addition, as part of a joint project with the World Bank, funding has been allocated for the repair of inpatient rehabilitation units in 8 medical institutions in 6 regions – Zhytomyr, Kirovohrad, Ivano-Frankivsk, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi, and Chernihiv regions.

The discussion highlighted the recent inclusion of social workers in rehabilitation teams at medical institutions. This is an extremely important innovation, as these specialists help patients while they are still in hospital, for example, by restoring documents, applying for social assistance or finding the necessary services. A pilot project on dual training of healthcare professionals has been launched to improve the quality of education and increase the number of specialists in rehabilitation units.

The Minister outlined further steps planned for 2025. These include the development of industry standards for rehabilitation together with practitioners, further development of centres of excellence to train multidisciplinary teams from other institutions, and the introduction of a mono-service so that every patient can receive the necessary assistance from one rehabilitation specialist if needed.

Also, the development of the outpatient format of rehabilitation care continues. It is primarily aimed at people who need long-term rehabilitation. The Ministry of Health will continue to work to ensure that all cluster and multidisciplinary supercluster hospitals have modern barrier-free rehabilitation departments.

Background

Every year, on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, representatives of central executive authorities, NGOs and international organisations, and persons with disabilities discuss pressing issues.

The National Forum on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities “On the Way to the EU” is organised by the NGO The League of the Strong and the NGO Fight For Right in partnership with UN Women Ukraine, the International Renaissance Foundation, and the EU Delegation to Ukraine, International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES Ukraine), National Democratic Institute (NDI), MacArthur Foundation, New Democracy Fund, Kvinna till Kvinna and with funding from the UN Women’s Peace & Humanitarian Fund, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and UK aid.