How disability will be determined in 2025
15 November 18:23
Starting January 1, 2025, Ukrainians will receive disability in a new way, as the Cabinet of Ministers approved the reform of the MSEC on November 15. This is reported by Komersant ukrainskyi with reference to the Ministry of Health.
The MSEC will be replaced by expert teams for assessing the daily functioning of a person. The result of their work will be:
- the status of a person with a disability;
- payments, benefits and deferrals to which they are entitled;
- if necessary, auxiliary means of functioning;
- one comprehensive document, instead of 12 certificates and extracts in various combinations.
The patient’s path from the initial application to the granting of the status of a person with a disability is also changing. Previously, a person had to communicate with the attending physician of the institution and the institution’s SCC on the way to the MSEC, but now only the attending physician will be on the way to the expert team. And the reference and statistical information previously kept by the doctor in paper form will be displayed on public analytical panels (dashboards).
Moreover, the case, referral, protocol, and decision will now be in electronic form. So will the data of the patient and the doctors who will conduct the assessment (previously they were in paper journals). By the way, they will be hidden from each other until the day of the assessment.
Also, in the course of the reform, expert assessment teams will be placed in powerful multidisciplinary hospitals, while currently the MSECs are located in separate premises.
By the way, such a team will include practicing doctors of various specialties, which are necessary to consider each case of granting a person with disability status. Also, if earlier the commission consisted of 4 to 10 doctors, and their composition was fixed for each patient, now the team of doctors will be selected for each case according to the profile of the case. None of the MSEC chairmen will be able to join such teams.
The process of additional examination of the patient will also change. Previously, this required the MSEC to return to the attending physician for an e-referral. From January 1, 2025, such a referral for additional examinations will be issued by a doctor of the expert team.
And in the process of making a decision, the position of each doctor will be recorded, which will result in a joint decision that will be signed with an electronic signature. If a person is not satisfied with the decision, an appeal can be filed electronically or in paper form at the central level, and not to the regional MSEC, as it was before.
In addition, a person has the right to be present with his or her representative during the decision-making process on granting a disability. Both are allowed to video record the meeting. By the way, it will become mandatory starting in 2026.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health emphasized that from January 1, 2025, documents for people with indefinite disability status will remain valid.
For the rest of the people with disabilities whose re-examination falls within the period of the new system implementation, the re-examination period will be extended by 6 months. All documents, payments, benefits, social services and deferrals will be preserved.
