Filenews 23 March 2021 - by Marilena Panagi
Eighteen months after the implementation of the General Health System, the Health Insurance Agency and the Cyprus Medical Association are setting out to prepare medical protocols and guidelines, on the basis of which the health professionals of the GHS should act from the beginning of the implementation of the System. OYS and PIS will determine how they will cooperate and yesterday informed the Minister of Health, Konstantinos Ioannou, during a meeting they had with him at the Ministry of Health.
According to information provided by "F", the whole effort will concern the preparation, or more correctly the adaptation of international medical protocols to Cypriot data, while at the same time, qualitative criteria and guidelines will be established on how doctors will act within the System, depending on the medical specialty, diagnosis and needs of patients.
The whole project will be undertaken by a Special Technical Committee, which has already been set up and consists of representatives of the PIS, the OYS and the Ministry of Health. The scientific companies of doctors will play an important role, since the protocols to be prepared will concern all medical specialties that offer services through the General Health System and their participation is considered necessary.
The Technical Committee, as we are informed, begins its work within the next few days and formal timetables have not been set, since this is a fairly difficult and time-consuming undertaking on which the whole functioning of the GHS will then be based.
The absence of protocols, quality indicators and guidelines during the first eighteen months of implementation of the GHS is a huge gap in the functioning of the System, since in several cases the Health Insurance Agency has had to take and implement decisions that have provoked reactions from both health professionals and patients themselves.
It is noted that the effort to prepare the medical protocols had started several times in the past without however giving the desired results. Moreover, the intense disagreements between the Health Insurance Agency, the Government and the Cyprus Medical Association, and in particular the attitude taken by the doctors' leadership in the last few months prior to the implementation of the GHS, had suspended all proceedings that had been under way until then, with the result that the System was put in place without doctors having in their hands the basic instructions on how they should act in the service of their patients.
