in-cyprus 27 April 2023 - by Annie Charalambous
The government on Wednesday gave patients in Cyprus a much-needed voice by providing an electronic assessment of their satisfaction in hospitals within the General Health System (GeSY).
Their rating will count towards the amount of compensation a hospital should be getting from the island’s Health Insurance Organisation (HIO).
The relevant regulation in the GeSY software was implemented on Wednesday, along with regulations concerning the replacement of consumables by pharmacists in cases of shortages.
As well as with the procedure for establishing registers of chronic patients, something that aims to better treat people who need health services more often.
Specifically, the evaluation of hospitals is carried out via a questionnaire prepared specifically for this purpose and sent to all those who receive inpatient care immediately after returning home.
This is one of the qualitative criteria that the HIO is incorporating into the new way of compensating hospitals in GeSY.
It is considered to be particularly important since the score given by patients will be able to influence by up to 10 points the amount of compensation that a hospital will be receiving at the end of each year.
The rolling-out of this evaluation method marks the beginning of a new way to reimburse hospitals by HIO. Α full set of qualitative criteria is expected to be implemented in July.
In addition to questions relating to infrastructure and equipment which HIO will take into account to pay health centres, the new criteria will also include variables such as the number of senior citizens a hospital serves and the type of admissions it accepts.
For example, if 5% to 10% of the hospital’s patients suffer from comorbidities, the hospital will receive additional points.
Furthermore, a hospital will receive additional points if the percentage of elderly patients it has admitted exceeds 10%.
