WMJ 03 2010 - World Medical Association

Regional and NMA news
Health Policy Reform in Albania and
Development of the Order of Physicians of
Albania
Shaqir Krasta
Din Abazaj
• Improvement of the budgetary and managerial
capacities in the health care system.
• Inclusion in the health insurance scheme
of all health services and liberalisation of
health insurance trading.
• Improvement of the infrastructure and
equipment of health institutions by introducing
contemporary technologies.
• Extending information technology to all
of the system.
• Institutionalisation of the continuous
medical education with accredited programmes
and, in relation to this, professional
revalidation, recertification and
periodic relicensing of health care system
professionals.
• Accreditation and licensing of health institutions,
management of the risk and
improvement of the quality of health institutions,
introduction of indicators for
performance, efficacy and effective measurement.
Since 1990, after the changing of the political
and social regime, the health system
in Albania encounters a lot of difficulties
related to:
• very limited technical capacities to establish
policies, strategies and national
plans;
• the insufficiency in the health care system
financing and weak capacities in the field
of health management;
• not yet applied institutional and individual
professional accreditation;
• the missing decentralisation of competences
ranging from government authorities
to health institutions and public entities
and, as a result, not quite appropriate
functioning of the orders and professional
organisations;
• the lack of experience in monitoring and
controlling the private activity;
• the lack of diagnostic equipment and curative
services.
One of the acute problems is the unequal
distribution of medical staff. Many communities
are left uncovered by the health
service. As a result of free movement and
the migration towards big cities or abroad,
the physicians have abandoned their working
places in remote rural areas.
Taking into consideration the abovementioned
problems, the health reform in
Albania was concentrated in an ambitious
strategy that introduced many challenges to
be faced.
Facing these challenges, Albania has already
gained advancements in many sectors, setting
up of necessary structures in the sectors
of Health Insurance Policies and Management,
Quality Control, Accreditation,
Licensing, Monitoring, CME, Standardisation
and Maintenance of medical equipment
and others.
• Actually, the reforming policies concerning
the health care system in Albania are
directed towards:
• Improvement of the quality of health care.
• Augmentation of access and possibilities
to offer health services nearer to the communities.
Connected to these, the National Centre
for Continuous Medical Education and
the National Centre for Quality, Assurance,
and Accreditation of Health Institutions are
established in Albania. Regarding this, special
attention has been focused on the collaboration
and inclusion of the professional
orders and associations.
In this regard, after the changes in the socio-economic
and political system, in 1994,
by a law of the Albanian Parliament the
Order of Physicians of Albania, as a new
body without any precedent in the Albanian
medical history, was created. This entity began
the activity in the circumstances of a
very difficult transition in all sectors of the
Albanian social life.
Until 2000, the Order for reasons of a handicap
to the first law was completely depending
on the Ministry of Health; its activity
and competence were very restrained. In
2000, the new Law No. 1615 “On the Order
of Physicians in the Republic of Albania”,
which considered the Order an indepen-
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