In the first place, physicians expect that digitization should produce a unique eRecord of the patient with a case history and for healthcare facilities to be networked for a more efficient flow of information. The NALED survey on satisfaction with the healthcare system showed that citizens were not sufficiently informed about electronic services in healthcare.
The NALED survey entitled “Satisfaction with the healthcare system and how to improve it”, which was presented last Friday, showed that half of Serbian citizens were satisfied with the quality of services in state healthcare facilities.
Marija Vranjanac, IPSOS researcher, and Miroslava Krstić, manager for regulatory reform in the field of healthcare (NALED), presented the results in NALED premises.
Research participants highlighted poor organization, lack of staff and insufficient motivation of healthcare professionals as the most important problems.
Action should be triggered by the fact that more than half of the surveyed citizens had to have previous health documentation in paper when visiting healthcare facilities for medical examinations, which will change significantly with the digital networking of healthcare facilities.
The physicians who participated in the research pointed out that they dedicated up to 40% of their working time to working on medical documentation, which they mostly kept in paper form. Physicians expect that digitization should produce a unique eRecord of the patient with a case history and for healthcare facilities to be networked on all three levels for a more efficient flow of information.
A small part of healthcare facilities (14%) enabled physicians to use telemedicine, although 82% of them claim that they would use telemedicine if it were possible for them. Most physicians believe that additional training for using digital services would be very useful.
Minister of Health, MD/PhD Danica Grujičić, who analysed this research together with Vukašin Radulović, president of the NALED Healthcare Alliance, assessed that the results were objective. She believes that better organization, less paperwork, faster scheduling of examinations, procurement of equipment and salary increases are priorities for improving the system.
Citizens are not sufficiently informed about electronic services in healthcare, the survey showed. Almost three quarters of citizens believe that the further process of digitization is useful and that it is most necessary to better inform the public about the existence and advantages of electronic services.
The priorities of NALED and its Healthcare Alliance coincide with the views of citizens and physicians, as pointed out by the NALED program director, Jelena Bojović. Apart from the development of a single electronic medical record, a key step in the digitization of the system will be networking of all healthcare facilities and specialist physicians, she says.
The research by NALED and Ipsos was conducted with the support of the E-health project, which is financed by the American Agency for International Development (USAID) in more than 20 countries around the world, including Serbia.
