The two-day debate of the draft law of the Ministry of Health “Doctor for all, equal and quality access to the services of the National Health Services Organization and to the Primary Health Care and other provisions” begins today in the Plenary Session of the Parliament. It will be voted on tomorrow.
The Ministry of Health gives 12 questions and answers for the changes that the draft law brings to the daily life of the citizen:
1. What changes with the personal doctor?
Today, the absence of personal doctors leads citizens to hospitals for simple or complex health problems, which causes system malfunctions and inconvenience for them. The personal physician will now be the one to whom the citizens will turn and will prescribe medicines free of charge, will receive instructions, and at the level of prevention, referral for examinations or for treatment when there is a need. All services will be free for the citizens.
2. Who can be personal doctors?
The personal doctor can be a) a doctor of a Health Center, Local Health Unit (To.M.Y.) or other public structure PHC, b) a family doctor who already provides his services within the operation of Local Health Groups as provided by law 4461/2017, c) a doctor contracted with EOPYY, as well as a private doctor. They will be general practitioners or physicians, but doctors of other specialties who attend chronically ill are not excluded.
3. What will be the selection process of the personal doctor?
Once the network of doctors is created, citizens will be free to choose between the doctors who will participate as personal doctors. The selection will be made without geographical restriction. The way of registration will be clarified by a ministerial decision immediately after the passage of the bill. The registration will be done through an easy-to-use platform and the citizens will be able to register themselves. Registration for minors will begin at a later stage. Until then, the needs of infants, children and adolescents will be covered free of charge by the available pediatricians of the public structures of PHC and those contracted with EOPYY and at the expense of the parents by the private pediatricians.
4. Will access to a personal doctor be free for specialist doctors?
The new system stipulates that personal physicians are also defined as doctors of other specialties for the adult population, especially when the specialty is associated with the monitoring of citizens suffering from chronic diseases. In this case, personal doctors can also be private specialists, for example, a heart patient can choose his cardiologist as a personal doctor, a patient with chronic respiratory disease, the pulmonologist of coke. In any case, in the case of specialist doctors contracted with EOPYY, access will be free.
5. Is registration with a personal doctor mandatory?
The goal of the Ministry of Health is through the personal doctor to promote the change of culture in health issues and the citizens to develop a relationship of trust with their doctor similar to the one that they usually maintain as parents with their children’s pediatricians. Therefore there is no talk of a mandatory registration. However, an incentive framework is being set up for citizens to choose to register.
6. In areas where there may be no doctors, where will citizens register?
If there are no doctors available in one area, they will be able to choose a doctor from another area and consult with the means of modern technology.
7. How will the participation of doctors be ensured?
Physicians will be financially motivated to join the network of personal physicians and take on a reference population. Those doctors who accept the maximum number of registered citizens (2,000) will receive a fee per person. The more patients the doctor prescribes, the more money he will get. Doctors at Health Centers or TOMYs will receive an additional fee.
8. What does the citizen expect from the regulations of EOPYY in relation to the quality criteria of the Negotiating Committee?
The introduction of Quality Criteria ensures better services for the citizens. At the same time, all Health Providers will be motivated to improve the quality of services and to be better paid by EOPYY. In relation to the Price Trading Committee, the citizen will again benefit because the Trading Committee will ensure better prices for EOPYY and therefore lower participation costs for patients.
9. What does the modification and improvement of the Electronic Insurance Expense File mean for the patient?
The application for the creation of an Electronic File of Expenses of the Insured Beneficiary is important because it enables the insured in EOPYY to have direct access to the expenses that concern him. This limits the possibilities of irregular charges and the patient has a complete picture of the services he receives and their costs. It should be noted that there is a possibility of challenge by the insured in case they have not been performed or have been overpriced, of the examinations listed in the file of the insured.
10. What is the importance for the surveillance and control of infections in Public Primary Health Care Services?
We all know that our country records low performance in the field of infections within health facilities. In this sense, the institutionalized surveillance and control of infections in the Public Primary Health Care Units is very important. Infection watchdogs are designated and PHC units are linked to Referral Hospitals to support infection surveillance measures.
This is a very important Public Health measure that reduces the incidence of infections and gives a greater sense of security to the citizens, especially during the epidemic where there is a high outbreak of nosocomial infections as a significant percentage of deaths, as pointed out by infectious disease specialists, is due to Covid-19. to multi-resistant germs, from which they became infected.
It is important to note that nosocomial infections are expected to increase rapidly, and according to the British Health System Infections Committee, it is projected that by 2050 the leading cause of death worldwide will be infections caused by resistant germs.
11. What will the patients benefit from the institutionalization of the development and organization of home care and health care in health units of the National Health System?
Nursing care at home is an issue that concerns an increasing number of elderly people and people with chronic and acute diseases. Patients can avoid unnecessary and costly hospitalizations or long waits due to increased workload of medical staff in outpatient clinics for examination.
It is very important that it prevents them from staying in the hospital for a long time (institutionalization), thus avoiding nosocomial infections, which are another common problem and have been on the rise in recent years. Home Care and health care is developed and organized according to the needs of the citizens, providing them with a high level of health services.
Finally, it relieves the family environment of the burden of caring for these patients. It also releases a large number of beds from the NSS Hospitals which can be made available to people who are in urgent need of hospitalization.
12. What does the establishment of the National Oral Health Committee mean?
This new body for oral health proposes the National Strategy for Oral Health, gives opinions on the training of the specialty and the continuous training of dentists. Oral health as an integral part of public health must be given high priority and this is required by the weak indicators of Oral Health of the Greek population. It is a first important step of the many things that need to be done to improve Oral Health in our Country.
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