Regarding the new GESY system, it is anticipated that the system will be open for citizens to register officially in June. Out-patient care under GESY starts from 1 June.
However, it is recommended that if you have a doctor of choice at this stage that you contact them to register an interest in registering with them once the registration system opens. You will need to check that:
1 They are participating in the GESY system
2 That they are compiling a list of potential patients for GESY
3 They will take pre-registration details from you ahead of the official registration
Doctors registered under GESY have a 2,500 patient cap and popular doctors are likely to achieve this limit fairly quickly.
If you have pre-registered with the doctor of your choice, the doctor should give priority to those patients when official registration begins.
GPs will also be able to register more patients than the 2,500 quota, if the potential new patient meets certain criteria, which are outlined on the Gesy website.
In the case of children, the parent or guardian that has registered one child with a paediatrician, can register a sibling with the same doctor.
A paediatrician could also take on more patients, in the event that there are not enough doctors.
Similar rules apply for GPs who exceed the 2,500 limit. If a family member is registered with a doctor who has already reached their limit, another adult family member can register with the same doctor.
With many private doctors still refusing to join Gesy, shortages of GPs and paediatricians remain a concern, but reports surfaced this week that some doctors currently working at state hospitals have left to set up their own medical practices and register with the HIO, in the hopes of getting pay increases. While the fee per patient under Gesy is not enough to tempt many private doctors, it is more than a doctor in a state hospital receives.
Twelve doctors out of a total 825 from the state hospitals have reportedly left to register with the HIO as GPs.
State doctors are currently under state health services (Okypy), which has said that it would begin to negotiate for the transfer of the state doctors to the Gesy’s HIO.
State doctors who opt to work as GPs under Gesy could see their salaries go up by at least 25 per cent according to a proposal in the report commissioned by Okypy.
The proposal, prepared by professor Mike Pringle, suggests monetary incentives at the initial stage of Gesy for state doctors who will work as GPs and additional incentives involving both items of service payments and points accrual in subsequent years.
The proposal was commissioned by Okypy after a decision to offer additional incentives to public sector GPs as their salaries under Gesy will be lower than those of the private sector.
For the first phase of Gesy, between June and December 2019, each GP would receive €10 per beneficiary registered with them. Toward that end €1.2m has been earmarked in the 2019 budget and “is equivalent of an average 25 per cent increase in salary for each of them”, the document said.
Information edited and taken from article in the Cyprus Mail, 14 April. Article by Peter Michael. Article is under the heading 'Popular GPs have reached Gesy patient quota.'
