A regional experience of the optimization of neurological care for the rural population

Abstract

At present, the problem of disparity of healthcare, including neurological care, in urban and rural settings is highly relevant. Medical care after acute stroke or other chronic disabling diseases (epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease) in rural settings is quite challenging due to the lack of access to specialized medical treatment facilities, low level of resources in medical and obstetric centers, low quality of healthcare, personnel turnover in rural healthcare and insufficient coverage of population with outpatient follow-up services. The most promising optimization approaches, which proved to be effective both abroad and in the Russian Federation, including Tyumen district, are the development of multidisciplinary mobile teams and telemedicine. Introduction of these approaches provides an increased access of rural population to specialized medical care, which leads to improvement in overall population health status.