Lack of targeting to the major issues that plague the citizens and the inability to prioritize the needs of Greek society, states the Panhellenic Medical Association (PIS), after the discussion of the recent bill of the Ministry of Health in the Parliament. He states that during the debate in the Plenary of the Parliament he found “serious distortions of his positions, despite the clear and detailed position of the president of Athanasios Exadaktylos in the Social Affairs Committee, and also the written memorandum that the PIS had submitted to the political leadership”.

Specifically:

In relation to article 7 of the bill, the decision of the General Assembly of the PIS is reiterated, which was reaffirmed by the recent Plenary Session of the Presidents of Medical Associations and the Board of Directors of the PIS and which expressly states:

“PIS is in favor of her full and exclusive employment of NHS doctors, to whom the state must significantly increase salaries in order to staff the public health structures with a sufficient number of recruits, so that overwork phenomena disappear and citizens are covered with quality health services. Any granting of the possibility to ESY doctors to practice private work, as described in article 7, will destructure the ESY Hospitals and KY and at the same time will cause conditions of unfair competition with the doctors who are active as independent professionals. PIS considers it a fundamental need to maintain clean relations between the public and private health systems and especially between the doctor and the patient, and in this direction it will continue to fulfill its institutional role”.

Therefore, he states in today’s announcement that “the invocation of PIS as proposing the last-minute amendment withdrawn by the Minister of Health is completely unfounded and pretentious. We assume that he did so in order not to name and expose to the medical community those who actually proposed it, relentlessly circumventing the decisions of the General Assembly.”

“On the contrary” PIS considers “that does not serve transparency at all the withdrawal by the minister of article 35 which had been proposed by the PIS and had been approved by the Council of Ministers and the legislative committee. With this specific arrangement, all immunity and immunity in disciplinary cases for presidents and members of the Medical Associations and the PIS was lifted, so that they are equally accountable to every other doctor in the country to the disciplinary bodies, when this is required by the laws and the Code of Medical Ethics”.

Regarding the issue of the afternoon surgeries, the PIS believes that “it is a minor issue the employment of the NHS doctors in their free time, while a major issue is what they could offer in their regular working time, when due to understaffing 40% operating rooms remain closed.

In addition, it is a challenge to legislate the solution of EOPYY’s contracts with the laboratories which may be mobilized, when the clawback that would have been abolished in 2018 reaches 50%”.