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Program helps Russian doctors learn about health care
Green Bay Press-Gazette (Green Bay, WI)
Posted on October 10, 2007
By Nathan Phelps
Dr. Aleksandar Rosic fielded a litany of questions ranging from certification and licensing of doctors in the United States to the number of hours he and other doctors work from a small panel of three Russian doctors around his desk at Aurora BayCare in Green Bay.
The questions came along with a demonstration of the hospital’s digital documentation system that has done away with most of the paper involved with paperwork, replacing it with wireless Internet connections and computer screens.
The Russian doctors, Yelena Seroshtanova, Omaraskhab Magomedov and Andrey Mazurov, are in the Green Bay area this week seeing how health care is provided in this country through the Open World Program and the Green Bay West Rotary Club.
Tuesday’s tour also gave the doctors a look at the hospital’s digital and electronic imaging capacities CT and MRI scanning as well as an impromptu tour of the lab and a chance to talk with administrators.
“The best learning is learning by comparison,” Magomedov, a chief surgeon at a hospital in Dagestan, said through an interpreter. “(I’m) receiving a great opportunity to compare the ways health care is provided over here compared to over there.”
He said this kind of trip can make a difference when he gets home.
“Absolutely,” Magomedov said. “I will share that information and certain changes that can be made, will be made.”
The weeklong visit includes stops at facilities and institutions like the Brown County Public Health Department, hospitals, the Libertas Center and health care insurance companies.
The ultimate hope of organizers is that some of what they delegates see while they are here can be “interjected” into the Russian system of health care, said William Bourbonnais, who is coordinator of the trip for the Green Bay West Rotary Club and an vice president of transmission at Wisconsin Public Service Corp.
“For instance, we were talking at St. Mary’s Hospital and we have six or eight MRIs in the Green Bay area. They have one for three million people,” he said. “So they’ve been taking down Web sites and books on equipment.”
A visit to a dialysis center was added mid-week to give Seroshtanova, who works with children, many of whom have blood problems, a chance to see equipment they use and what’s available on the market, including home-use equipment, Bourbonnais said.
The Open World Program has brought about 12,000 political, economic and civic leaders to observe the American democratic and free market systems through intensive, short-term theme-based visits to the United States, according the organization’s Web site.
Mazurov, a pathologist from Siberia, said through the interpreter that delivery of health care in Russia is undergoing a major restructuring process focused at this point on providing new equipment to areas where it is needed - including the most remote parts of the country.
“What (we’re) missing is the technology, the higher quality of equipment, and more of that equipment,” Mazurov said. “In larger cities, the technology is present and it’s very up to date, but in provinces it’s not so widespread and it would be nice for them to receive the latest news on medical research as expeditiously as it’s possible to receive here.”
Doctors are also moving toward more narrow specialization in medical delivery.
“Basically, increasing the role of preventative medicine in Russia, because it hasn’t been very widespread or customary,” he said. “Better quality prenatal, postnatal and delivery care (and) introducing computer technology to health care.”
[Reprinted with Permission]
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