Evaluation of effectiveness of public expenditures in psychiatric healthcare treatments in Georgia

Abstract

Health care system in Georgia appears to be one of the important priority of the country during last decade and varies within 9-11%. With regard to health care costs, mental health sector, share its funds within 2%. Although mental health financing and resource distribution are characterized by a growing tendency in Georgia, effective allocation of funds directed for psychiatric treatment remains underestimated. Evidence based government policies imply to offer differentiated services for people with mental health problems and are based on cost-effectiveness analysis. Contemporary studies with the cost/benefit/effectiveness analysis, confirm the effectiveness of community services intervention. In particular, under the same expenditures, community services can make far more positive results by improving the quality of life of people with mental disorders rather than ordinary hospital services.

Nowadays, costs for the inpatient services are three times higher compared to the ambulance treatments in Georgia. Taking into view the fact that the country spends 100 times less funds in financing of mental healthcare policies then developed countries and 12 times less than Eastern European countries, choosing appropriate policy which remains adequate ratio between treatment approaches on the bases of cost-effective studies arises in the political agenda.

Investing funds in community services means taking out the same amount of funds from in patient, which is already scarce and significantly lower in comparison with the similar indicators in other countries. Thus, giving preferences to inpatient or outpatient services seems to be problematic without analyzing appropriate data and comparing benefit received from funding one treatment policy to the losses of another treatment policy as a result of finance reducing.