Health Minister: Reform will modernise primary care in Georgia

Georgia has announced a new major reform to modernise the country’s health system.

Today Health Minister David Sergeenko said his Ministry now focused on developing better primary healthcare for the people of Georgia.

Primary healthcare is basic, standard care that people access when they initially approach a nurse or doctor for treatment. Typically the primary health care provider acts as the first point of contact and principal point of continuing care for patients within a healthcare system, and coordinates further specialist care if needed.

"I want to stress that this will be a very thorough reform of primary health,” Sergeenko said.

He added many countries made a mistake when they paid their entire attention to specialist or hospital care while primary care was "absolutely ignored”.

The Minister believed primary care needed to handle 80 percent of patients, while only about 20 percent should require hospital-based treatment.

"Sadly, today we have a situation where patients go directly to a hospital and they choose on their own what specialist doctor they should see and a family physician and primary care institution in general is totally skipped,” Sergeenko said.

"Our main goal is for as few people to need hospital treatment as possible.”

The Primary Care reform is part of the third step of the modernisation of Georgia’s healthcare system. The country has already successfully implemented a Universal Healthcare reform and was now in the process of implementing a reform to eliminate Hepatitis C.

Georgia will implement the Primary Care reform with the help from American experts.