The drafting of the draft law “Reformation of the institution of the Personal Physician – Establishment of university health centers and other provisions of the Ministry of Health” was completed in the Social Affairs Committee of the Parliament.

New Democracy was in favor of the bill. SYRIZA, KKE, New Left and Niki voted against. PASOK, the Hellenic Solution, Pleussi Eleftherias and the “Spartians” reserved their final position in the plenary session.

The Deputy Minister of Health, Irini Agapidaki, responded to those who distance themselves or disagree with the inclusion of rural doctors and specialists in the institution of personal doctors.

“We bring the personal doctor into a realistic context. It seems extremely contradictory to me that we invoke the youth, whenever it suits us, and say that ‘we need the young doctors, the young doctors are capable’ and at the same time, within the Parliament, we discredit these people and consider them, neither more nor less , ‘apprentices, who do not know medicine’. They have a license to practice, they are doctors, who take care of the mother, the father, the soybeans of all of us who are in the countryside, and they give their best every day, and I think they deserve to be recognized for their work”, said Irini Agapidaki . The deputy minister reiterated that all doctors – qualified or not – will be trained in the role of personal doctor and emphasized that for the first time there will be coverage for 530,000 children who will have a free personal pediatrician, because the government is interested in “the citizen who is plagued by health inequalities”, the person who does not go to the doctor because he is afraid of the cost. “We work for these people and the general population, of course. But in our mind are always the people who have financial weakness”, said Mrs. Agapidaki.

He also commented on the criticism of the opposition parties, which focuses on health financing. “You know, from 2019 to today, health funding has increased by 50%. It is the biggest increase in twelve years. We are interested, not in talking theoretically, about the problems, but in solving the problems. In this context, the Ministry of Health deals not only with the care of the patient but also with the healthy to stay healthy. The Ministry of Health has not fulfilled, as it should, this basic obligation, for 40 years. The Mitsotakis government is coming to do this,” said Irini Agapidaki and referred to the free screening programs (breast cancer, cervical cancer, colon cancer) and the program for cardiovascular diseases, which will “run” next time.

The Minister of Health, Adonis Georgiadis, said that the bill addresses the issue of the lack of general practitioners/pathologists in order to have the role of personal physician. “Today, 5.5 million insured persons are covered by the personal doctor. Our commitment to the European Commission, in order to be able to get the TAA money and to pay for this very expensive reform, is to increase the number of citizens who will have a personal doctor, to about 8 million, and therefore we have to find additional doctors,” said Mr. Georgiadis.

Responding to the criticism of the inclusion of rural doctors and specialists in the pool of personal doctors, Mr. Georgiadis commented that, despite the criticism, the opposition parties did not respond to the exhortation addressed to them, to propose other doctor specialties that could to be subject to the institution of a personal doctor. “The general practitioners we have and the pathologists are not enough to implement this reform. They are less. If you add to this the great need for internists in hospitals, you will understand that we have a need for internists anyway. Well, you can’t not see this and criticize and tell Agapidaki what you say. What should Agapidaki do? To give birth to pathologists?”, said Adonis Georgiadis. “There is no real argument based on logic for someone to vote against this bill, for someone who believes that the institution of the rural doctor should exist.”

He also emphatically mentioned the prospect of updating the patient’s electronic file by the personal doctor. “This will give us the possibility, in the coming years, for the leadership of the Ministry of Health to be able to plan policies, having real data in their hands. This is great for disease prevention, for pharmaceutical spending, for public health policy. This is what the bill does. It adds to the arsenal of the health minister a shocking weapon, if they manage to get it right,” said the health minister.

The main objective of this initiative is to strengthen primary health care, said the ND rapporteur, Maria Kefala, who voted in favor of the bill. “By reforming the institution of the personal doctor, we are strengthening the part of prevention and preventive medicine in our country, we now cover the entire population. A personal doctor for all citizens”, said the ND rapporteur and emphasized that in essence, the personal doctor becomes a pillar of preventive medicine. Ms Kefala said that in outline, the key interventions of the bill are “more personal doctors, financial incentives for new doctors, automatic enrollment for those who do not register with their doctor of choice by 6/1/2025. Establishment of a system of performance indicators for personal physicians. Personal pediatrician for children. Establishment of eight University Health Centers, one in each Medical School. Telemedicine stations in the University Health Centers with the aim that the faculty members who will take on the work of emergency medicine, can examine citizens living in remote areas and properly advise their colleagues, so that emergencies can be dealt with in a timely and efficient manner and reduce unnecessary transports ».

SYRIZA’s rapporteur, Andreas Panagiotopoulos, said that the ND is forced after the “failure of the Pleuris law” for the personal doctor, to resort to emergency solutions even though it has been in power since 2019, and while during this time it could include incentives for there to be more GPs and GPs needed to support primary health care. Mr. Panagiotopoulos called it a mistake to turn rural doctors into personal doctors “overnight”. “This will not contribute to any reform of primary health care, it will not contribute to the policies of disease prevention and promotion of public health. These medical school graduates and despite the monthly training, you know that all they will do is prescribe, possibly pass the 1500 AMKA and the names of the patients in a file and we are done,” said the SYRIZA MP.

PASOK’s special buyer Ioannis Tsimaris said that despite the time it had to submit a comprehensive strategic plan for Primary Health Care, its main concern today is covering the contractual obligation under the Recovery and Resilience Fund. “This is a sad realization for the Greeks whose fate you have been managing for the last six years, due to audacity and lack of political will. We know what the solution is to incentivize doctors to fill the positions. You decided to run at the last minute and include the rural doctors in these goals”, said the PASOK special buyer. Mr. Tsimaris called on the Ministry of Health to answer which study was based on the legislation he submitted to the Parliament and what is the strategic plan for primary health care.

The special buyer of the KKE, Giorgos Lambroulis, said that everyone should be connected to the personal doctor, “searching through a scattered village of primary health care points, whether in the public or private sector, a direction that undermines the unified and team-oriented character that must to have the health system”. It sounds like a bad joke, the KKE MP also said, the claim that prevention and health promotion services will be included in the family, in schools, in the workplace, for the chronically and mentally ill, “when public primary health care is now non-existent, under dissolution in essence, with huge shortages in personnel of all the necessary specialties and branches of health”.

“A personal doctor can be someone who will practice in the place he chose to live permanently and not in another place, where he lives temporarily and necessarily at the beginning of his term”, said the special buyer of Hellenic Solution, Maria Athanasiou . The deputy accused the government, that the citizens of the region continue not to feel the state as their ally and helper, they are not supported by adequate and efficient health systems.

Free Shipping expert buyer Spyros Bibilas said the bill does not bring about real reform, but instead chooses to fill the gaps in personal physicians, recruiting general family medicine specialists and doctors who have not yet chosen a specialty and serve in service positions. countryside. “The physician still in training does not have the experience required in order to proceed in any case with the necessary assessment, with the accuracy required, both for the patient’s health condition which is the most important, and for the correct choice of medical actions that are needed”, said the Freedom of Navigation MP.

“We accuse you of failing to provide equal, universal, free and reliable health care, both in tertiary, secondary and primary care. And this failure is not supported by us who accuse us of partisan expediency, but it is reflected in the numbers,” said New Left expert buyer Ozgur Ferhat. The Member of Parliament referred to Eurostat data which “records a doubling of the unmet health needs of the population in the last five years, with the cost of health services in Greece being the main cause of these unmet needs, as well as a dramatic worsening of excess mortality in the country that ranks it second in the European Union and well above the European average”.

The bill is doomed to fail, estimated the expert buyer of “Niki”, Nikos Papadopoulos, and observed that it lacks care for increasing health resources and recruitment.

“The bill formally tries to cover the gaps, but in practice it will not have the expected results, because too many citizens will simply register a personal doctor in their AMKA, but they will not have appropriate health services”, said the specialist buyer of the “Spartans” “, Petros Dimitriadis.