Formation of the General Practitioners System in Russia: Problems and Prospects

The quality of primary health care (PHC) affects the performance of the health care system, including reducing the number of hospitalizations and cases of severe diseases. In the 1990s, the reorganization of primary health care began in Russia - a transition was planned from the district service model to the general medical practice (GP) model. The need for such a transition was due to a number of long-standing problems in primary health care in the country, including a shortage of clinic doctors and an insufficiently high level of competencies of local doctors. The full implementation of the general practice model, for various reasons, was also never fully realized. The issues of differences in the competencies of general practitioners in comparison with therapists and the influence of education on the level of competencies remain unstudied, or insufficiently studied. The author fills these gaps in his work by studying these problems.