Patients should not be forced to pay for CT scans: the Ministry of Health is preparing legislative changes

Ministry of Health is preparing legislative changes that should make it impossible to collect money from patients for diagnostic examinations already paid for by the state. On July 8, 2026 the Minister of Health Viktor Liashko.

This concerns private diagnostic centers that operate on the territory of state or municipal hospitals. The Ministry of Health proposes to amend Article 18 of the Fundamentals of the Legislation of Ukraine on Health Care so that patients are not forced to pay out of their own pockets for tests covered by the Medical Guarantees Program. In particular, if a required CT scan is included in the program, it must be free for the person. A hospital that receives funding from the NHSU for treating a patient will be able to settle payment with a private diagnostic center on its own. The Medical Guarantees Program also covers the cost of the contrast agent. Services that are not included in the program should be provided transparently as official paid services of the medical institution.

According to Liashko, a separate problem is the artificial creation of long queues. A patient may be told that a free examination must be waited for several months, even though there is no documentary confirmation of such a queue, after which the person is directed to a private center in the same hospital or nearby.

The electronic healthcare system has registered 749 CT scanners, of which 496 are used in facilities operating under the Medical Guarantees Program. Most of them — 396 devices — are located in municipal hospitals. At the same time, the equipment load remains low: in some regions an average of seven to eight studies per day are performed on a single device, and in some — only four. By comparison, in European countries this indicator ranges from 20 to 40 examinations.

Over the past five years Ukrainian hospitals have received 348 units of diagnostic and therapeutic equipment with a total value of more than UAH 7.27 billion. Among them — 42 MRI machines, 235 CT scanners, 21 linear accelerators and 50 angiographs. The changes proposed by the Ministry of Health were supported by participants of the hearings held at the office of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities under the President of Ukraine.

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