FAS made a decision on a case against the Ministry of Health Care

The Ministry of Health Care of the Russian Federation failed to set unified requirements to be met by license applicants and holders, as a result of which regional licensing bodies set them at their discretion

On 6 October 2017, taking into account the evidence in their totality, FAS Commission qualified omission by the Ministry of Health Care as violation of Part 1 Article 15 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”: failure to set requirements to organizing and carrying out works (services) constituting medical activities for the licensing purposes.

The grounds of the intervention by the antimonopoly body was failure by the Ministry of Health Care to set licensing requirements to work and services constituting medical activities and provided for by the law of the Russian Federation. As a result, the licensing bodies, regulators and Courts apply the licensing law in the medical sphere differently. This practice fixes entry barriers for the medical services market and creates different supervision conditions for work of medical institutions across Russia.

Head of FAS Department for Control over Social Sphere and Trade, Timophey Nizhegorodtsev said: “Absence of an integrated system of licensing requirements generates serious issues for both market participants and the regulators. FAS constantly receives information about different licensing practice on the same types of medical works and services in different subjects of the Russian Federation. Our warning, however, has not been fulfilled. Measures were not taken in the course of the case investigation. Hopefully, the Ministry of Health Care will ultimately devise the relevant licensing requirements for all types of works and services constituting medical activities, and, therefore, will create unified and equal control-and-supervision conditions for all medical institutions in Russia”.

The full decision will be drawn up and forwarded to the respondent within ten working days.