By Sameera KumarThe Daily Northwestern
Less than half of them spoke English fluently, but about 20 Eurasian representatives still came to St. Francis Hospital this week to learn about the American health care system.
They represented the top physicians and health care administrators from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and spoke at least eight different native languages. Their purpose was to spend about one month in different U.S. cities to learn about issues such as hospital management, Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance and technology.
“Our system has some very bad qualities, for example: financial and funding problems, we have a high newborn mortality rate, and we don’t have many health care managers,” said Olga Gorbatyuk, the chief pediatric surgeon of Ukraine.
The participants visited through the Special American Business Internship Training program, which is run by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the participants said. There are thousands of applicants, but only 20 are chosen. The program selects leaders of developing health care systems and pays for their costs as they travel to the U.S. and visit Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago and Minneapolis. There they observe the health care technologies and health care systems so they can learn from their experience and make contacts with physicians, hospitals and companies.
The participants visited St. Francis Hospital, 355 Ridge Ave., Wednesday morning and early afternoon. The schedule of events included an introduction and overview of hospital finance, a tour of the hospital’s facilities and technologies, and presentations about a 64-slice CT scanner, trauma centers, nursing and physician practices.
“It was a very exhilarating experience. We were proud to host them,” said Christine Rybicki, director of public relations at St. Francis Hospital. “What a rare opportunity that they would come to our hospital. We are a community hospital. A lot of the other hospitals they visit are larger academic hospitals.”
Many of the the participants’ native countries are undergoing financial restructuring in their health care systems. Several participants represented their country’s ministry of health, so the participants wanted to learn about issues relating to the financial side of health care, including third-party payment, such as Medicare, Medicaid and HMOs, as well as about cost control.
“Georgia is on the way to creating a new system of finance in health care and we started a financial program similar to the U.S. program of Medicaid,” said Archil Morchiladze, a physician and manager at the Ministry of Health of Georgia.
For other participants, the tour and the description of the hospital’s technology was more interesting. The 64-slice CT scanner was of particular interest, some participants said. They spent almost an hour talking about the device during a question and answer session.
The scanners can save large amounts of money by preventing unnecessary medical procedures. They are used to check results for health tests that could indicate the need for surgery.
“In Azerbaijan the medical system is developing,” said Isa Mustafayev, deputy chief doctor of the Leyla Shikhlinskaya’s Clinic. “In the last three years in Baku, four private hospitals have opened with 16 to 100 beds each, and these hospitals need new equipment. I am looking for new technologies and companies for technology.”
Regardless of their individual interests, all of the participants came to the U.S. with one particular mission. They said their goal was to gain exposure to an established health care system so they could see what the field really had to offer their countries’ developing health care system.
“I want to take the strengths and weaknesses of this system and bring it to my country,” Morchiladze said.
Reach Sameera Kumar at [email protected].
