The Center for Economic Initiatives in Cincinnati announces a health care and medical services study tour from the Republic of Kazakstan, from September 16th to the 28th, 1996. A total of 20 high level professionals will visit Cincinnati during that period to learn about the Health Care and Health Insurance industry in the United States.
The program is funded by a World Bank loan to the Republic of Kazakstan. Kazakstan is a large (four times the size of Texas) and relatively new republic formed after the breakup of the Soviet Union. It is best known as a major launch site for the Soviet space program, and contains large and extensive oil and mineral deposits.
The Center for Economic Initiatives (CEI) is an independent non-profit corporation whose objective is to provide business assistance and information in the establishment of free market conditions in countries which are emerging from communist or controlled economies to democratic and open market societies. The Kazakstan study tour is designed to give assistance to this group of twenty professionals in the health care field, as their country moves from a centrally controlled medical system to a more diverse, free market method of operation.
During the two weeks the tour is in the USA, they will visit over 20 organizations in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky.
The Cincinnati Enquirer, Tuesday, September 3, 1996
The republic of Kazakstan in the former Soviet Union is sending a group of 20 health-care professionals to Cincinnati to learn about the U.S. health-care and insurance industry.
The tour, sponsored by the Kazakstan government with funding from the World Bank, comes as that country’s health-care industry struggles to transform itself from a centrally controlled medical system to a more diverse, free-market operation.
The Cincinnati-based Center for Economic Initiatives is organizing the program, which will run Sept. 16-28.
Former Soviet republic intends to privatize
by URSULA MILLER
The Cincinnati Enquirer, September 18, 1996
Technician Gigi Aderfis shows a pregnancy test kit to Seifulla Masayev, president of the Association of Family Doctors in Kazakstan, Monday at the Price Hill Health Center.
A group of 19 health-care professionals from the Republic of Kazakstan is in Cincinnati this week and next to learn how hospitals, doctors and insurance companies run the business of American medicine.
The two-week tour, which kicked off Monday at Xavier University, comes as the former Soviet republic struggles to redesign its government sponsored health-care system into a privatized one, said Leland Cole, the group’s coordinator in Cincinnati.
Tour sponsors
The Cincinnati-based Center for Economic Initiatives has organized the tour, which runs through Sept. 27. It’s hosted by he Xavier Center for Health Management Education and includes field trips to health-related businesses in the Tristate.
Kazakstan got a $1.8 million loan from the World Bank to fund a total of 10 various industry tours to Western countries.
The first half of the four-week health-care industry tour was in Germany; the second half, in Cincinnati. The participants are leaders in their respective fields and include hospital administrators, insurance executives and doctors. Monday The group started with a morning orientation that outlined the basic structure of the American health-care system. Ida C. Schick, a teacher in Xavier’s Department of Health Services Administration, explained how insurance companies and government-sponsored programs work; the education requirements for doctors and nurses; the organization of hospitals and long-term care facilities; and the factors changing the system today, namely the emergence of health maintenance organizations.
Dr. Fred Elkus, medical director for long-term care at Drake Center, followed b giving a more detailed look at the role of doctors. Jack Reamy, also a teacher in Xavier’s health services department, provided more details on employer-sponsored insurance programs and government-funded ones such as Medicare and Medicaid.
The group scribbled notes as an interpreter translated the speeches into Russian.
Financing a system
Kuralbay Kurakbayev, fir deputy director for Kazakstan’s Fund for Compulsory Medic Insurance, said the group hope, to come away with a better understanding of how the American health-care system financed.
Though all of Kazakstan’s 16.6 million citizens are entitled to government-sponsor( health care, the system is so financially strained that hospital and pharmacies often lack adequate supplies of basic medicines and standard equipment.
Kazakstan is south of Siberia in Central Asia. It is about four times the size of Texas, and its largest ethnic group is the Turko-Mongols, a people of Asian descent. The official language is Kazak, but Russian is widely spoken.
The group spent Monday afternoon at the Cincinnati Health Department’s center in Price Hill. Tuesday, they toured Hill-Rom Co., Hillenbrand Industries’ hospital-bed manufacturing subsidiary in Batesville, Ind. Today, they’re headed to Drake Center, a not-for-profit, tax-assisted rehabilitation and long-term care center.
Other stops: Maple Knoll Village retirement community, the Lexington Clinic, Bethesda, Southern Ohio Health Services Network, Adams County Hospital, Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Center for Information Technology Services at University of Cincinnati, Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Dayton, Greater Dayton Area Hospital system, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield and ChoiceCare.