Filenews 12 July 2023 - by Marilena Panayi
Two nurses and a specialist doctor of the GHS seem to see the exit door from the system since, as it appears at first sight, they charged the HIO for visits they never made.
At the same time, about 250 GHS personal doctors were informed by a letter sent to them by the organization that they were under investigation after it was found that they issued a large number of physiotherapy referrals for specific diagnoses. Dozens of other cases are pending before the HIO and, although slowly, unannounced on-the-spot inspections are now also taking place.
As far as the two nurses and the specialist doctor are concerned, the HIO has already sent letters informing them that their contract has been suspended.
According to information provided by "F", the HIO placed the three specific GHS service providers under surveillance following complaints submitted to the organization by beneficiaries of the system.
The investigation so far revealed that the two nurses submitted claims to the organization for compensation related to visits, which, as they stated in the software, they carried out at their patients' homes.
In fact, the HIO seems to have compensated in some cases these two nurses who were finally identified when patients who were informed via their email about the visits registered by the nurses in the software, contacted the organization stating that they had never received these services.
Similar was the case of the specialist doctor who also allegedly submitted claims for compensation from the HIO for visits registered in the name of specific patients. Again, the beneficiaries, who received the relevant updates in their e-mail, contacted the agency stating that they had not visited the doctor in question and had not received the services for which he claimed compensation.
Both nurses and the specialist doctor will not offer services through the GHS until the investigation of the complaints by the HIO is completed. If these complaints are confirmed, the HIO is likely to terminate their contracts, as it has done in 11 other cases of healthcare providers to date.
Specifically, according to the HIO's report so far, the termination of contracts was decided in eight cases of specialist doctors. Six of these cases were forwarded to the police.
Two of the three cases of other health service providers whose contracts have also been terminated by the HIO have been forwarded to the Police.
The agency has also rejected claims for compensation made by providers after they were found to be unjustified. These requests concerned a total of €9 million. while in 70 cases fines totalling €200,000 were imposed. Both in the case of the imposition of a fine and in the case of the rejection of claims for compensation, the cases mainly concerned the non-compliance of providers with the instructions of the HIO. For doctors, for example, a common cause is incorrect completion of clinical notes in the patient's file.
Hundreds of other cases are pending and under investigation before the agency. It is also recalled that according to official HIO data, last June around 500 different investigations were in progress.
"We can protect the system"
"The last three cases, of the two nurses and the specialist doctor, confirm what we have been saying for a long time: We patients ourselves can protect the system from abuse and exploitation," the president of the Federation of Cyprus Patients' Associations, Charalambos Papadopoulos, told F, stressing at the same time that "as beneficiaries of the GHS we have in our hands a valuable tool. Our email. If we monitor it and if we pay attention to the messages sent to us by the HIO regarding any registration of a claim by a health service provider in our name, then we can help identify those who exploit the GHS and proceed to abuses that work to the detriment of all of us".
The beneficiaries of the GHS, Papadopoulos concluded, "must understand that they have a responsibility to protect the system. They should not be afraid and we say this because from our experience and from the Patient Observatory that we operate at OSAC, we find that many times, citizens take us, report some things to us, but then they do not proceed with a formal complaint and so we in turn cannot proceed with a complaint to the HIO or any other body that is competent depending on the case".
