LvBS and the State University of New York are developing a program for healthcare managers in Ukraine

The implementation of health care reform in Ukraine requires significant changes in thinking and perceptions. This transformational change requires leadership skills that are not widespread or well established in Ukraine. Many health care providers have also been given new functions and responsibilities regarding to these reforms. For this reason the main focus of the management part of the reform should be on education and on personal skills development. This program proposes to improve the model of high-quality competency of health managers (developed 2 years ago by LvBS graduates in conjunction with the Health Department of the Lviv Regional State Administration). The new model will meet global standards of healthcare administration and is based on the model developed by the Healthcare Leadership Alliance (a consortium of national leading associations of professional health administrations in the United States).

The main objective of the project is to work with international partners to develop leaders and managers who can implement the reform process in their own organizations. Program participants will understand the goals of the reforms and be aware of their strategic and operational implications.  As an important factor - they will have zero tolerance for corruption.

The implementation of the program will have both a local and a national impact on the health care system in Ukraine.  At the local level, the development of new management skills will help achieve the goals of the reform and make the transformation of the entire health care system easier and more accessible in the short term, which will enable institutions and operating teams to develop and deliver health care services more efficiently and at the same time in a less costly manner.

As for the overall, national impact, it is important to stress that the autonomous health care facilities with new managers will become centers of excellence and share their knowledge with other hospitals. Such managers may, in the future, become managers in health departments, the National Health Service of Ukraine, or the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.

Yaryna Boychuk, CEO of LvBS

The values of the Lviv Business School of UCU (LvBS) and our motto "Growing Companies by Growing People" have for many years shown that we are not just an educational institution, but also a school that has the very ambitious goal to develop and participate in Ukraine's growth. I am very honored that our values over the past few years have been implemented in the field of health management as we all deserve a high level of medical services. This is why we teach administrators and leaders in this field about modern management methods which medical reform requires from them. This joint project with SUNY and funded by USAID will enable us to refine our knowledge and create a world-class training course.  The week of collaborative work has shown that we already have something to share with our overseas partners and that they can help us achieve our ambitious goals - to make our medicine and our health care facilities better and more efficient.

During the week when the project team, medical practitioners, researchers, lecturers, and representatives of stakeholder organizations, evaluated the challenges faced by the Ukrainian health care system, they analyzed key vectors of heal thcare  reform (financing, service delivery, public health, eHealth, professional medical education, etc.) and worked on the main tasks:

• Identify key competencies of the program.

• Evaluate existing training materials and create new ones in order to build a curriculum for the course and program structure.

• Determine the selection criteria for the first group of program participants, dates and duration of the program.

 Nata Avaliani, USAID Project Leader on HIV Reform in Action

The USAID Health Reform Support Project upholds the implementation of health care reform, which means developing a new health care financing system for the country. This system is fundamentally different from the previous one. It is thus an important joint initiative for USAID and the Government of Ukraine, which  to develop an instructional and educational capacity at an academic institution to meet the needs of the health care system, where future health care managers will acquire new knowledge that is important to the success of their institutions in the context of health care reform.

David Odegaard, School of Public Health, State University of New York at Albany

Our visit to the Lviv Business School of UCU (LvBS) is part of a partnership to create a certified health management course with USAID funding. Our representatives were pleased with the attention of LvBS team and their desire to cooperate. In our opinion, LvBS is the one educational institution in cooperation with which we can create such a course for all of Ukraine. We have great hope that our project will help Ukraine to complete the reform process easier and faster.

The program will start at LvBS in February 2020 and will have three phases, each of which will last for 5 days. It will be attended by 25 health care executives from all over Ukraine (follow our news to be the first to know about the terms of the competition). The main objectives of the program are to educate health care managers on new methods of managing in accordance with global standards and to provide them with the knowledge that will help during the reform of specialized medical care. Enrollment for the program will begin in October 2019.

The first training program for medical managers at LvBS's Leaders for Health was conducted in partnership with Be-It Health & Social Impact within the framework of a World Bank project funded by the Swiss Cooperation Office.