JUSTIFICATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE CHANGE IN THE RURAL POPULATION WITH THE CHANGE IN THE NUMBER OF FELDSHER AND OBSTETRIC UNITS ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE VOLOGDA REGION AND PROPOSING WAYS OUT OF THE CRISIS OF RURAL HEALTHCARE
This paper substantiates the importance of solving the problem of the outflow of the rural population, leading to the extinction of Russian villages. One of the reasons for this situation is put forward - the consequences of the implementation of reforms in the healthcare sector, which resulted in the emergence of significant differentiation in the availability of medical care between the rural and urban population, due to the liquidation of district hospitals and feldsher-obstetric centers. The relevance of the selected problem is confirmed by the raising of the issue of walking distance of medical institutions by Vladimir Putin in his message to the Federal Assembly on March 1, 2018 and, as a consequence, the inclusion of the issue of accessibility of medical care to the rural population in the National Project «Health Care». In this paper, on the basis of publicly available statistical data, the presence and type of dependence between such indicators as the number of feldsher-midwife stations in the study area and the share of the rural population is determined. Based on the constructed dependence, based on the forecasting results, an assumption was put forward of the possible result of the dynamics of the share of rural residents in the organization of additional points for the provision of primary health care. In addition, the paper proposes options for overcoming the crisis in rural health care, based on two important areas: the organization of new medical centers and the involvement of specialists to work as rural paramedics.