The number of hospitalizations in Ukrainian medical facilities rose from 5.5 million cases in 2021 to 8.3 million in 2025, said Yevhen Gonchar, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Health, in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
According to him, the patient demographic has also changed: the proportion of hospitalized men aged 18–65 rose by 12 percentage points during this period.
At the same time, the increase in the number of hospitalizations came to a halt in 2025, and in the first half of 2026, the number had already decreased compared to the same period the previous year.
Gonchar emphasized that the new hospitalization criteria approved by the Ministry of Health do not trigger this decline but rather reinforce a trend that had already taken shape within the healthcare system.
However, comparing indicators over a long period requires caution. Between 2020 and 2022, Ukrainian healthcare facilities transitioned from paper-based to electronic record-keeping, so the quality of medical case coding gradually improved. According to the deputy minister, data from the electronic healthcare system has been stable enough for year-over-year comparisons since 2023.
