Kazakhkstan health system review.

Since becoming independent, Kazakhstan has undertaken major efforts in reforming its post-Soviet health system. Two comprehensive reform programmes were developed in the 2000s: the National Programme for Health Care Reform and Development 2005-2010 and the State Health Care Development Programme for 2011-2015 Salamatty Kazakhstan. Changes in health service provision included a reduction of the hospital sector and an increased emphasis on primary health care. However, inpatient facilities continue to consume the bulk of health financing. Partly resulting from changing perspectives on decentralization, levels of pooling kept changing. After a spell of devolving health financing to the rayon level in 2000-2003, beginning in 2004 a new health financing system was set up that included pooling of funds at the oblast level, establishing the oblast health department as the single-payer of health services. Since 2010, resources for hospital services under the State Guaranteed Benefits Package have been pooled at the national level within the framework of implementing the Concept on the Unified National Health Care System. Kazakhstan has also embarked on promoting evidence-based medicine and developing and introducing new clinical practice guidelines, as well as facility-level quality improvements. However, key aspects of health system performance are still in dire need of improvement. One of the key challenges is regional inequities in health financing, health care utilization and health outcomes, although some improvements have been achieved in recent years. Despite recent investments and reforms, however, population health has not yet improved substantially. World Health Organization 2012, on behalf of the European Observatory on health systems and Policies.