Cyprus Mail 24 January 2020 - article by Evie Andreou
The national health scheme Gesy will post a surplus of €80m in its first year of full operation, said Thomas Antoniou, the head of the Health Insurance Organisation (HIO), which administers the scheme.
Antoniou presented the budget for 2020 for the HIO, to the House health committee on Thursday. He said that the forecasted expenses of Gesy would be €969.6m and forecasted revenue €1.05bn.
Antoniou said it was moving for him to present the first budget for Gesy which enters its second and final phase of implementation in June. Deputies submitted several questions to Antoniou and expected written responses by the HIO’s board and management.
Deputies were informed that the HIO needed more staff to be able to fully perform its duties. There were still problems in the operation of Gesy but these were gradually being tackled said Antoniou.
He explained there were still doctors that had not fully come to terms with the changes, while some patients were still putting pressure on doctors for unnecessary referrals and lab test. Doctors were much less obliging in this respect than they had been in the past.
Disy deputy Savia Orphanidou, after the meeting, said there had been great progress in the first months of Gesy’s operation. She added, however, that some doctors registered too many patients with the result they had long patient lists and could not respond to patient calls.
During Thursday’s meeting deputies discussed the possibility of lowering the maximum number of patients registered with a personal doctor from the current 2,500 to 1,500, said Orphanidou. This was possible now that more doctors have joined Gesy.
Edek leader Marinos Sizopoulos used the forecasted surplus for 2020 to ask why state guarantees had been given to private hospitals in order to join Gesy. If the HIO budget would post an estimated €80m surplus, then why did the government need to offer €70m in guarantees, he asked.
Edek and Diko disagreed with the government offering €70m in guarantees to persuade private hospitals to join Gesy.
