Improving the Regulatory Framework in the Field of Preventive Medicine as a Factor of Public Health Safety

Abstract

In 2020, within the framework of the RFBR grant «Legal and Criminological Problems of Preventive Medicine», the first stage of the study on criminological risks in the field of preventive medicine (hereinafter referred to as PM) was conducted and its results were published. It was found that corruption risks are the main threat to criminological security in the field of PM. This article presents the results of a new study, which is a continuation of the work under the designated RFBR grant. The anti-corruption expertise of a number of legal acts regulating relations in the field of PM showed that they create significant prerequisites for corruption during preventive medical examinations, and as a result, a decrease in the safety of public health. The analysis of the results of the discussion of draft departmental regulations on the official government website, as well as the results of a survey of medical professionals, lead to the same conclusion. An analysis of the totality of the results obtained in the course of the study suggests that the current model of organizing preventive medical examinations is largely the result of lobbying on the part of medical organizations that receive income from PM, including corruption lobbying. The authors come to the conclusion that the organization of preventive medical examinations should be put under effective public control, and adjustments should be made to the anti-corruption expertise of draft normative legal acts on preventive medical examinations: medical specialists should be involved in such expertise and preliminary sociological studies should be conducted to establish the acceptability of the projected legal regulation for the participants in the relations.