Filenews 28 March 2024 - by Marilena Panayi
Before Orthodox Easter, the Health Insurance Organisation will proceed with the implementation of a regulation, which will allow beneficiaries of the General Health System to be informed by text messages on their mobile phones, (along with emails), for all registrations of Health Service Providers made in their name in the GHS software.
Details of the actions that the beneficiaries of the system will be asked to take in order to receive text messages on their mobile phone will be announced very soon, since the new procedures will provide for both the elderly and generally for people who do not have access to the internet and currently cannot be informed by e-mail.
Priority for the organization at the moment, is the connection of GHS beneficiaries with their electronic profile in the system's software, since, as revealed by an HIO survey, to date, almost five years after the implementation of the system, 260,000 adult beneficiaries have access to their electronic files who proceeded to activate their profile through the specified, since the start of operation of the GHS in 2019, procedures.
Through these beneficiaries, about 100,000 other beneficiaries are presented connected to the system, who are actually children registered in the name of their parents. As a result, the total number of beneficiaries (adults and children) accessing their account is less than 400,000, while the number of GHS beneficiaries is now approaching one million.
The same investigation into the GHS software also revealed that a large number of mobile phones registered in the name of beneficiaries have either been deactivated or do not belong to them (but to the person who most likely registered them with the GHS in 2019).
In fact, mobile phone numbers have been identified in some cases and are registered to many and not just one beneficiary of the system.
Similar phenomena are recorded in the case of email addresses registered in the name of beneficiaries, which obliges the HIO to appeal to citizens to update their data, with the relative clutter currently observed in the system being justified since in April 2019 various facilities (e.g. registration by personal doctors or other persons) had been given to citizens in order to register to the GHS without much hassle.
In order for the HIO to proceed with the implementation of the new regulation, the IT Director of the organization, Marios Tziakouris, told "F", "it must have at its disposal the correct data of the beneficiaries of the GHS and in order to do this, citizens must first activate their profile in the software (the procedure is posted on the GHS website) and then check if the mobile phone number and email address are registered belong to themselves.
This is necessary because, in the first phase, the HIO will start sending the text messages to beneficiaries who have an activated profile in the GHS software and the organization has the correct data at its disposal. If the profile is not activated, the beneficiary cannot access it to check if the correct mobile phone number and email address are registered."
The process of activating the beneficiary profile is posted on the GHS website while, "for the elderly who do not use the internet or other people who do not have access to the internet or do not know how to use it, a specific procedure has also been defined which they must follow in order to start being informed about what concerns them and is registered in the system".
Specifically, the elderly or the person who does not have access to the internet will be able to receive text messages on their mobile phone if, through their personal doctor, they activate the relevant setting. "Details of this process will be announced soon and citizens should wait for the activation date of the new regulation to be announced first and then contact their personal doctor."
Concluding, Mr. Tziakouris stressed that "the information of GHS beneficiaries via email will continue to take place in parallel". He noted, however, that "the activation of the profile of beneficiaries in the system is very important for the beneficiaries themselves, since in this way they ensure direct access to all their data, such as prescriptions for medicines, referrals issued to them, etc."
