[Physiotherapeutic service of the Irkutsk region: present status, problems, and prospect].

INTRODUCTION

Improving the organizational forms of physiotherapy services in the context of the formation of the novel specialty of physical and rehabilitation medicine poses urgent tasks for practical public health. At the same time, ensuring the proper quality of medical care, the high level of safety, customer satisfaction from the new service presents a multifaceted and complex problem that cannot be solved without analyzing the current situation in the units of the physiotherapy network.

OBJECTIVE

To study the parameters of the activity of physiotherapy units of treatment-and-prophylactic facilities in the Irkutsk Region to assess the dynamics of their development and further prospects.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The authors analyzed the data of state statistical annual reporting on the work of physiotherapy departments (PTDs) and physiotherapy rooms (PTRs), which had been submitted to the Medical Information Analysis Center, Ministry of Health of the Irkutsk Region, and information on physiotherapeutic medical care in the treatment-and-prophylactic facilities of the Irkutsk Region in the period 2010 to 2017.

RESULTS

The quantitative indicators of the activities of PTD and PTR employees were investigated; the qualitative components of their activities were assessed; the problems of physiotherapeutic management were revealed and the ways of their solution were defined. Since 2014, there have been negative changes in the development of physiotherapy: the material and technical base is worsening; the number of doctors and nurses is being reduced; the specialists' qualification is decreasing, and the coverage of patients with physiotherapies is reducing.

CONCLUSION

Physiotherapy is currently undergoing a period of stagnation. Along with the existing systemic economic problems of modern public health, the deepening of this negative situation in physiotherapy is promoted by the protracted period of the formation of the new specialty of physical and rehabilitation medicine physician, the absence of its legal base, federal state educational standards, which creates a number of misunderstandings of its promises and demand for physiotherapists in near future.