Health Care Law in Georgia — a Systemic Overview
The Georgian Law on Health Care is a systemic act regulating the relations between state authorities and natural and legal persons in the sphere of protecting citizens' health. This page brings together five pillar provisions of the law into a single picture: the law's subject, the principles of state policy, the governing body of the system, the mechanisms of state funding — including the voucher — and the status of a medical facility. Such an overview is especially useful when a particular issue — licensing, patients' rights, funding — needs to be understood in its systemic context.
Every conclusion below rests directly on the text of the law: no figure or requirement has been added beyond the law's content. Where the law entrusts details to another act — for example, the conditions of the voucher — this is stated as such.
The Law's Subject and the Principles of State Policy
The first provision defines the law's subject — relations between state authorities and natural and legal persons in the sphere of protecting citizens' health. It follows that private-sector participants — clinics, doctors, insurance organizations — fall within the law's scope whenever their activity concerns the protection of citizens' health.
The list of state-policy principles is broad and gives direction to the whole system: universal and equal accessibility of medical care for the population within the obligations envisaged by state medical programmes; protection of human rights and recognition of the patient's honour, dignity and autonomy; the independence of the physician and other medical personnel within the limits defined by legislation; the system's conformity with the country's economic development strategy; protection of patients placed in penitentiary institutions and of persons with diseases from discrimination in the provision of care; the establishment of universally recognized norms of medical ethics; full information of the population about all existing forms of care; cooperation with international health organizations; the state's responsibility for the volume and quality of services envisaged by the compulsory health insurance programme; the priority of primary health care, including emergency care, with the participation of state and private sectors and the development of the family-medicine and family-doctor institution; diversity of property and organizational-legal forms on equal terms; administrative sanctions for activities harmful to public health; programme-based funding of health care; funding of medical-biological research; and the participation of professional associations and NGOs in building a modern, effective system and in protecting patients' rights.