INFORMATION OF PARENTS ABOUT THE SYSTEM OF MANDATORY MEDICAL INSURANCE IN THE PROVISION OF MEDICAL HELP TO CHILDREN

Abstract

To assess the level of parents’ awareness of the mandatory health insurance system and the rights of the child in the field of health care, a selective medical and social study was conducted in children’s polyclinics and hospitals of St. Petersburg. The study showed that low awareness of parents in protecting the rights and interests of the child in the system of compulsory health insurance is associated not only with the inaccessibility of information, but also with the low activity of the population in obtaining it. Every third respondent did not know the name of the insurance medical organization where their child is insured, and how to apply to an insurance medical organization, and every fifth had no idea of the obligation of the insurance medical organization to protect the rights and legitimate interests of the insured. The bulk of the parents (75.3 ± 1.1) did not know about the existence of insurance representatives in children’s hospitals in St. Petersburg. The least informed on these issues were parents with primary education, unemployed, having children under three years old, having two or more children. If necessary, only 36.9 ± 1.3 out of 100 parents expressed their readiness to apply to the medical insurance organization. As the main reasons for the low legal activity, parents noted savings in personal time, inertia, mistrust and low awareness of the duties
of insurance medical organizations to protect the rights and legitimate interests of citizens, fear of reprisal by the administration and other medical workers, the desire to protect their interests in some other ways. However, the majority of parents (76.1 ± 1.1 out of 100) expressed interest in obtaining the necessary information on these issues, based on the targeted approach.