The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved an action plan to reform medical and social expertise system in Ukraine and change the assessment and provision of needs for people with disabilities.

The full-scale war that began in February last year has caused a large number of casualties. This requires, among other things, changes in approaches to people who have lost partial or full functionality and need support to return to full life as quickly as possible.

Therefore, a large-scale reform is being launched to change the approach to assessing a person’s needs and provide them with all the necessary services to compensate for the limitations of their daily functioning.

The key changes planned include:

1) use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) to record a person’s condition and needs, as well as the actions required to recover, adapt to society, and restore quality of life;

2) implementation of a set of service packages in the medical, rehabilitation, social, educational and employment sectors in accordance with the identified needs of people with disabilities;

3) transparent, accessible and user-friendly tools for obtaining such services, including digital ones.

“The need for such a reform is especially important in the context of a full-scale war, as more and more people are getting injured. At the same time, we understand how complex and challenging it is. The process of transition to the ICF in many countries took years, and sometimes decades. The first results have already been achieved in the field of rehabilitation, but more systemic changes – in the methodology of expert assessments, models of service delivery and financing, digitalisation, etc. – will take longer and require close cooperation between many ministries and institutions involved. The full launch of all components of the reform will take until 2025. The system will be rebuilt on the basis of a human-centred approach – it will be focused on people to simplify their lives, not complicate them. It will be modern, transparent and convenient,” said Viktor Liashko, Minister of Health of Ukraine.

The use of the ICF in various fields will allow to consider a person not from the point of view of the medical diagnosis they received due to their injury, but from the point of view of their potential to restore lost functioning, needs and what can be done to help them return to normal life.