Bureaucratic reporting may cost Russia 80 billion rubles in health funds

Nine out of ten primary‑care physicians in Russia say the national preventive‑examination system — known as dispanserizatsiya - needs a fundamental overhaul. A survey of frontline doctors points to bureaucratic reporting forms that do not match clinical workflows, unreliable patient questionnaires, and centrally set volume targets that bear little relation to real‑world capacity. Insurance‑company analysis estimates that formally conducted exams waste roughly 80 billion rubles of compulsory health‑insurance funds each year. Reporting forms that hinder care About 63 % of surveyed specialists report difficulty completing the required statistical reports, and 43 % say the paper forms themselves are out of step with actual medical procedures. The mismatch encourages a "blind” approach: examinations are performed on paper while the clinical content is hollowed out. Data from the insurer SOGAZ‑Med, based on claims for 15.8 million insured persons, illustrate the consequence. On repeat examinations, chronic diagnoses recorded in earlier rounds frequently "disappear” — a pattern that suggests either poor diagnostic quality or fictitious documentation.