VIDEO: Instead of Treatment in the Pediatric Anti-Tuberculosis Dispensary, Families Used it for Leisure

The Ministry of Health of Armenia carried out a budget reallocation between healthcare institutions last year. Due to the review of allocations based on previously established personal agreements in certain healthcare institutions in Yerevan, significant funds saved were redirected to regional healthcare facilities. According to the report by Armenpress, this was stated by Health Minister Arsen Torosyan during a discussion of the annual report on the implementation of the 2018 state budget in the National Assembly.

“Under the previous government, the health budget was predominantly distributed based on various personal arrangements and was very disproportionate. One of my first steps was to quickly change these obviously senseless allocations. As a result, some medical centers were deprived of hundreds of millions of drams, which they simply wasted by the end of the year. These savings allowed for allocations directed towards the provinces. It was unprecedented when unspent funds in the provinces during the autumn were not redirected back to Yerevan and large healthcare institutions; instead, the unspent funds from Yerevan were sent to the provinces, where regional medical centers benefited from them and provided services to the population,” Torosyan stated.

He provided an example of a pediatric anti-tuberculosis dispensary in Dilijan that had a budget of 300 million drams, where children who had been in contact with tuberculosis patients were supposedly “receiving treatment.” “Our studies showed that primarily based on various agreements and referrals, children were simply resting there, and this had absolutely nothing to do with healthcare,” Torosyan added, noting that they have been able to change a lot and that a criminal case is underway.

The annual budget of the St. Grigor Lusavorich Medical Center was 5 billion drams, but they summarized 4 billion drams for 2018. Torosyan reminded that due to reallocations from the previous year, around 10,000 healthcare workers received a salary increase of 15-20 percent. This has continued with the 2019 budget as well. Thanks to the saved funds, they were also able to acquire additional medications, a process that continues this year. The minister assured that unnecessary wastefulness has been eliminated, and both inter-regional and intra-regional, as well as regional-to-Yerevan allocations have become as proportional as possible.