NEWSLINK Moscow Times/ Vedomosti: Russian Health Care Is Dying a Slow Death

Changes to the Russian national health care system have proceeded according to an obscure logic and led to very mixed results for medical personnel — and sometimes to lethal results for patients.

The authorities wanted to optimize and modernize the system by boosting the quality of medical care and making it more accessible. Instead, medical care has become inaccessible for a large part of the population, especially in rural areas: doctors labor under increased workloads, thereby compromising patient care; mortality in hospitals has increased; general morbidity is on the rise; and doctors are inundated with paperwork.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/russian-health-care-is-dying-a-slow-death/519253.html