Accessibility of High-Performance Medical Imaging Services in the Republic Of Moldova

Abstract

After a modest beginning, radiology and medical imaging continued to evolve and at the moment we are witnessing a rapid development of the medical imaging equipment, which has a huge role in the progress of medical and technical science worldwide.

Medical imaging is a discipline that plays a major role in establishing the diagnosis and therapeutic tactics.

The accessibility of high-performance imaging medical services within the framework of mandatory health care insurance proves that the normative framework and the network of providers from the Republic of Moldova are continuously developing, increasing year by year the population's access to highperformance imaging services, especially to computed tomography, digital radiology, nuclear magnetic resonance, angiography and ultrasonography.

In this article, the assessment of the accessibility of high-performance medical imaging services was carried out to identify barriers and improve this phenomenon.

To fully assess the proposed purpose, a selective, cross-sectional, mixed (quantitative and qualitative) descriptive research study was conducted.

The quantitative component - being addressed in the evaluation of the opinion of the beneficiaries (patients) regarding the accessibility to highperformance medical imaging services through the application of the questionnaire (20 questions), developed in the interest of the study, the research sample constituting 423 people.

The qualitative component - used to assess the perception of providers and prescribers regarding access to high-performance medical imaging services by forming focus groups with providing and prescribing doctors and an in-depth individual interview with the Head of the Contracting Department of medical service providers within the CNAM.

As a result, Tanahashi's concept, used by the World Health Organization (WHO) to determine effective coverage and identify the factors and barriers that determine access to health services [1, 6] was taken into account and it was found that the main deficiencies that limits the accessibility of the insured population to high-performance imaging services are of a subjective nature (restriction of access by medical workers, false reporting of high-performance services which were not performed as being performed in order to obtain unjustified income from the National Medical Insurance Company, monopolization of prescriptions for the performance of services by the specialist doctors) and objective (uneven distribution of imaging facilities throughout the country, lack of knowledge of the rights of insured persons, limited financial resources allocated for highperformance imaging services).

Based on the analysis and conclusions of the research, several recommendations were developed regarding the improvement of the accessibility of high-performance medical imaging services.