At the government session chaired by the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Alikhan Smailov, measures to implement the instructions of the President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev were considered. The Minister of Healthcare of the Republic of Kazakhstan Azhar Giniyat reported on the implementation of instructions in the healthcare system.

The Head of State instructed to switch to a centralized purchase of medical equipment on the basis of SK-Pharmacy. The Ministry of Health conducted an inventory in 2021, according to which the level of equipment of healthcare organizations was 83%, the wear and tear of medical equipment is at the level of 49.6%.

Currently, the main problematic issues of the medical equipment supply system are:

• insufficient equipment and a high level of wear and tear of the existing medical equipment fleet;
• high price dispersion when purchasing medical equipment locally;
• lack of mechanisms for leasing medical equipment available to healthcare organizations;
• low level of development of domestic medical instrumentation.

In this regard, as the minister noted, in order to solve these problems, it is planned to centralize the purchase of medical equipment on the basis of SK-Pharmacy LLP in two stages.

At the same time, at the 1st stage it is planned to implement the following activities:

• collection of applications from local executive bodies until March 1, 2022;
• amendments to the legal acts regulating the organization and conduct of the purchase of medical equipment;
• unification of technical specifications for procurement until the end of April 2022;
• in order to ensure transparency, information systems at the site of the e-finance center of the Ministry of Finance and automation of the collection of applications will be finalized;
• conducting e-procurement from May 2022.
• completion of the analysis of the need for medical equipment until 2025.

In the future, the Program for equipping medical equipment in priority areas until 2025 will be approved with the identification of funding sources.

“At the 2nd stage, it is planned to implement measures to study with domestic and foreign manufacturers of medical equipment the issues of localization of production, develop mechanisms for long-term contracts, introduce into the practice of purchasing mechanisms for life cycle contracts and purchase medical equipment for complex equipment in priority areas on a turnkey basis,” said Giniyat.

In general, the implementation of these measures will achieve the following results:

• ensuring transparency of planning and procurement;
• increasing the level of equipment with the necessary medical equipment;
• reduction in the cost of purchased medical equipment due to the consolidation of purchases and the unification of technical specifications;
• improving the quality of service and personnel training;
• Increasing the share of OTP in the medical equipment market of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The Head of State of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich Tokayev, emphasized the need to review the resources of the healthcare system, and in particular the costs of 20 hospitals, using public-private partnership mechanisms.

In order to optimize the list of republican public-private partnership projects for the construction of multidisciplinary hospitals, the Ministry of Health plans at the first stage during the implementation of the current National project "Healthy Nation" to build 5 university hospitals and 3 multidisciplinary hospitals by 2025. At the same time, the remaining 12 projects will be phased in from 2026.

At the same time, today joint work is being carried out with the Ministries of Industry and Infrastructure Development, National Economy and Finance, in terms of determining the marginal cost of 1 sq km of the construction of a hospital without medical devices and the norm of the maximum area per 1 bed, as well as in terms of developing an optimal financial model and optimizing costs for the announced 8 projects.

“The above instructions will make it possible to develop proposals for a unified approach and the best option for implementing the hospital construction program. The priority of building, first of all, university hospitals is due to the need to provide personnel for all other projects and to put into practice the principle of the trinity of education, science and practice,” summed up Giniyat.