Filenews 30 July 2024 - by Marilena Panayi
The Health Insurance Organisation is increasing the compensation of personal doctors for home visits to their beneficiaries in an effort to better serve patients who face serious health problems and cannot easily move around and visit their doctor themselves.
In fact, the HIO, according to the relevant announcement sent yesterday to the health service providers of the GHS, doubled the compensation of personal doctors, raising the amount from €30 until today, to €60.
"With the aim of continuously improving and upgrading the level of quality of healthcare services provided within the GHS, the Health Insurance Organisation informs Personal Doctors that the amount of the fee for each home visit by a Personal Doctor to a permanently lying beneficiary, as defined in accordance with Regulation 2 of the General Health System (Personal Doctors) Regulations of 2019, is increased from €30 to €60 as of 01/08/2024," the statement said.
As Andreas Papaconstantinou, general director of the Health Insurance Organisation, told "F", "the Organisation has made this change in order to better serve GHS beneficiaries who need visits from their doctor at their home. The compensation of €30 so far seems not to have been an incentive for our doctors since the amount, as shown in practice, was unprofitable given the time that the doctor would have required to devote to provide the service at home".
This action of the HIO also leaves satisfied the Federation of Cyprus Patients' Associations, which has long stressed the need to increase the services offered to bedridden and seriously ill patients who cannot easily visit the clinics of their personal doctors.
"Certainly, the purpose of OSAC is not to spend the money of the GHS Fund recklessly or without being in the interest of patients, but in this case, and it was also our request, we believe that the HIO was right to do so because a big gap is being filled. Many of our patients, until now, had a personal doctor only in name and over the phone", commented to "F" the president of the Federation of Cyprus Patients' Associations, Charalambos Papadopoulos.
"It is a step in the right direction," he said, adding that "for permanently bedridden patients, visits by their doctors to their home are essential. For these patients, of course, there is still a lot to be done, for example", said Mr. Papadopoulos, "we must look even more seriously at the home visits of nurses or other health professionals to the homes of these patients, and not only, because when a patient cannot go to his doctor it means that he cannot provide the services he needs in general. if professionals don't visit him at home
