Filenews 18 January 2023 - by Marilena Panayi
In March, the Health Insurance Organization plans to integrate the services of a podiatrist into the General Health System, which decided yesterday not to adopt a temporary validity plan prepared by the Ministry of Health and preferred to proceed on its own to the inclusion of podiatrists, in the category of Other Health Professionals, in the GHS.
The request for the inclusion of podiatrists was also addressed by the House Health Committee a few months ago. At that time, the HIO had informed that this issue could be discussed in 2024 and therefore the Cyprus Federation of Patients' Associations submitted a request to the Ministry for the state to undertake, temporarily, the subsidy of patients who necessarily need these services.
The Ministry of Health, as we are informed, after the establishment of a special committee under the general director Christina Giannaki, prepared a plan for subsidizing patients by the ministry. The request was referred to the Ministry of Finance for approval, but the response was negative and included a suggestion that the cost of subsidizing these patients should be borne by the HIO, even if the project would be managed by the Ministry of Health.
Following this development, the project, which as budgeted would cost a little more than €3 million for its implementation, was put before the HIO which, however, preferred to do otherwise and decided to speed up the process of integrating podiatrists into the GHS instead of the implementation of the program by the Ministry of Health and the payment of the cost by the GHS Fund. Thus, on Monday, at its meeting, the Agency's Management Board decided on next March as the starting date for the provision of these services through the GHS, without, however, setting a specific date.
According to the data on which the planning of the Ministry of Health was based and resulting from the GHS software, podiatrist services are necessarily needed by around 90,000 GHS beneficiaries. At the same time, the special committee had set the right to three visits per patient per year.
The 90,000 beneficiaries include patients with diabetes mellitus with complications diagnosed clinically and laboratory, patients with peripheral angiopathy, patients with neurological problems and paediatric oncological cases with foot-orthopaedic problems, patients with familial amyloid polyneuropathy, with sensorimotor neuropathy, hypoaesthesia-ulcers.
However, the timetable set by the HIO itself is rather difficult to achieve, although the Agency considers that the integration of podiatrists into the GHS in a little less than two months is feasible. The Organization, as we are informed, will try to update the data through the GHS software, while it will also re-price the services, if necessary.
However, the concern of the HIO board on Monday was great, since as it was emphasized the inclusion of podiatrists should not create a precedent for the uncontrolled integration of services into the System.
