Evaluation of Patient-Oriented Medicines Supply Information on Russian Healthcare Providers’ Websites

Abstract

Aims: To evaluate the Russian Federation healthcare providers’ websites compliance to legal requirements on availability of patient-oriented medicines supply information and compare the evaluation results between public and private healthcare facilities.
 Study Design: Cross-sectional study.
 Place and Duration of Study: The evaluation of compliance to legal requirements to medicines supply information on public and private healthcare providers’ websites available on the Internet was conducted in September 2021.
 Methodology: The study included a simple random sample of 66 websites of Russian healthcare providers containing two groups: public (n=33) and private (n=33) healthcare facilities’ websites. The compliance evaluation was performed by checking the availability of 4 medicines lists on the websites: (1) essential medicines list; (2) list of medicines for the most expensive chronic diseases to treat; (3) list of medicines that are prescribed only by shared decision of healthcare facility medical commission; (4) list of medicines that are dispensed for certain social groups with no charge or with 50% discount in outpatient care settings.
 Results: The difference of availability of the first list was 90.9% (95% CI 77.7%–97.4%) vs. 33.3% (95% CI 19.2%–50.3%) on public and private healthcare facilities’ website, respectively, P<.001. The difference of that in the second list was 42.4% (95% CI 26.8%–59.3%) vs. 15.2% (95% CI 6.0%–30.1%), P<.028. For the third no statistical significance was revealed (P>.05). For the fourth list the difference was 66.7% (95% CI 49.7%–80.8%) vs. 21.2% (95% CI 10.0%–37.2%), P<.001.
 Conclusion: It is required to improve the supervision approaches for both public and private healthcare facilities for better patient-oriented medicines supply information provision. The problem may be solved by the implementation of a centralized government policy repository with regularly updated lists, requirements, and best practices.

The Analysis of the Context of Digital Access to Healthcare in Russia

“…There are various digital tools to manage appointments and health records available for patients both at federal (Gosuslugi digital services) and regional (e.g., EMIAS for Moscow city) levels. Federal laws on healthcare services and CMI, along with the Orders of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, provide policies on health information mandatory for publication on healthcare providers' websites [50].…”