OBJECTIVES: Modern clinical practice is developing under influence of the evidence based clinical practice guidelines (EBCPG). In Russia development of the documents prescribing the content of care is connected with the idea that they may be used as well for estimation of the cost of care. The outcome is the national health care legislation of 2011. It dictates that care should be planned, funded, provided and evaluated in agreement with ‘standards of health care’ (SHC) – documents prescribing the average frequency and volume of interventions/dosage. The objective of this study was to evaluate, how the correction of the SHC with the relevant EBCPG may change the cost of the prescribed care.

METHODS: We selected the random sample of the SHC from the list approved by Ministry of Health for primary health care (SPHC) and specialized health care (SSHC). We exclude the erroneous drug listing and then we analyzed remaining interventions comparing SHC to the relevant EBCPG. Not recommended interventions were considered unnecessary. If the recommended by EBCPG intervention was missed in the SHC, then it increase the cost. We take the drug costs from the State registry of marginal sale prices and the cost of interventions from the relevant ministerial registry. We calculated the total cost of the SHC by summing up the cost of each medical intervention/medications specified in the SHC.

RESULTS: SPHC and SSHC both contain medical interventions and drugs that should not be provided. The total cost of all SHC included became lower: SPHC cost decreased by 66%, SSHC - by 19%. The smaller change of the cost of SSHC is explained by the fact that the major part of the total cost of SSHC is the stay in a hospital.

CONCLUSIONS: Correction of the SHC using EBCPG may reduce the cost of care.