Dr. Oleksandr Andriychuk, 37, has managed the Sokyryanska District Hospital in the Chernivtsi Oblast Ukraine for nine years, overseeing more than 320 medical workers and services for approximately 100 patients per day.  As Ukraine undergoes fundamental health care reforms, Dr. Andriychuk, and hospital managers like him, need new skills and expertise  to guide their facilities through the necessary operational changes. Not only must he transform his hospital into a not-for-profit enterprise to maintain access to National Health Service funding, he must also rise to an upcoming requirement for hospital managers to obtain a degree in health administration and demonstrate strong strategic, financial planning, leadership, and communications skills.

Despite the difficulty of the challenge, Dr. Andriychuk has been eager to gain expertise. Still, he struggled, because until now, Ukraine lacked education and training programs for healthcare managers that met international standards. 

“I was looking for a course to improve my skills for a long time, but information about the management of health care facilities was difficult to find,” he recalled. 

To help hospital managers take on new responsibilities and meet new educational requirements, USAID launched a new Health Reform Support (HRS) project with co-funding from UKaid. Through HRS, USAID joined the State University of New York and the Lviv Business School at Ukrainian Catholic University to launch a new health administration course for hospital managers. From among 230 applicants, HRS selected Dr. Andriychuk and 22 other hospital managers from 12 oblasts for the course. 

The course equipped the 23 hospital managers with financial planning and reporting skills, human resource planning tools, evaluation methodologies, management case studies, knowledge about ethical issues, a model for patient-orientated care, and approaches to minimize corruption risks. 

Dr. Andriychuk explained: “I learned extremely useful information and practical skills that I can apply to my job. Because of the course, I changed my approach to work, began using new management techniques, and improved my public speaking skills. I also added new services, such at my facility, such as tomography, hemodialysis project, and a new contact center for patients. These new services are my biggest successes – their impact is much greater than merely buying and installing equipment or finding and attracting additional investments.”  

By the end of 2020, HRS will transform the Health Administration Course into an online course that every hospital manager in Ukraine can access. Furthermore, the course will serve as a model for a new Master of Public Administration in Health program at the Ukrainian Catholic University. These educational improvements fill a serious gap in modern educational programs for health administrators and provide hospital managers with new critical knowledge and competencies, enabling them to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their facilities and ultimately leading to improved patient care.