Demand on healthcare services in Georgia is largely driven by rising prevalence of age-associated diseases and improved accessibility, supported by increased government spending. Public health spending tripled to GEL 1.3bn over 2010-19, reducing share of out-of-pocket payments from 73% to 56% of total health expenditure in Georgia. This ratio is still high compared to EU (16%) and peer EM countries in the region (38%). The government plans to reduce share out-of-pocket health expenditures to 30% of total by 2030.
New wave of reforms aims to make healthcare provision more sustainable through: 1) more targeted UHC model (effective from 2017), 2) new funding model – Diagnostic Related Grouping (DRG, to be launched in the near future), 3) new requirements for hospital infrastructure and human resources from 2021.
Hospital sector in Georgia shows low efficiency. Number of hospital beds stood at 4.7 per 1,000 people in 2019, above peers and many high income countries globally. With oversupply of hospital beds, occupancy rate is low (49% in 2019). Implementation of DRG model is expected to reduce market fragmentation and increase efficiency. Utilization of primary healthcare is still low in Georgia, despite significant improvement in accessibility over the last decade. Outpatient contacts per person stood at 3.6 in 2019 in Georgia vs 7.0 in EU.
Georgia faces oversupply of physicians and undersupply of nurses, with only 0.6 nurses per physician in Georgia vs 2-5 nurses in European countries. As a result, Georgian doctors are 3 to 5 times less productive than peers in terms of patients treated annually.
Georgia shows high incidence of COVID-19, with total confirmed cases up to 4,400 cases per 100,000 people as of December 9. Furthermore, testing seems to be insufficient to capture all the infected, with average 30% positivity rate in November. Mobility restrictions were reintroduced at end-November to limit virus spread.
COVID case fatality rate remains less than 1% in Georgia, below many developed and emerging countries in Eurasia. More than 7.2k COVID beds are prepared, out of which 6.9k are occupied as of December 10. There is a room to reduce hospitalization rate, relaxing burden on hospital sector. Vaccine candidates against COVID-19 show promising results. Georgia has already ordered first lot of vaccine (worth of US$ 4mn), expected to be available from spring 2021.
