Filenews 12 August 2024 - by Marilena Panayi
Less than 30% of beneficiaries of the General Health System who receive inpatient services answer the satisfaction/evaluation questionnaire, which is sent to them electronically by the Health Insurance Organization.
Those who answer the questionnaire seem to give a very high score to the hospitals that serve them, since in the first half of 2024, on average, the GHS hospitals received a grade of 9.1/10 from the beneficiaries they treated.
This score is even higher than that of 2023 which stood at 9/10, for the whole year.
"The Organization would like a greater response from GHS beneficiaries to the response to the questionnaires," HIO senior officer Monica Kyriacou told Filenews. "The percentage that we are now seeing that is responding gives us an indication of patients' satisfaction with the services they receive." However, "if we have more answers, then the HIO and the hospitals themselves will be able to identify some gaps and proceed with the necessary improvements and upgrade the quality of the services provided."
The questionnaire, Kyriacou reminded, "is sent to patients after their discharge from the hospital is registered in the GHS software and is completed electronically."
The questions included concern the services received by the patient, the cleanliness, the equipment and the conditions of hospitalization, the behavior and the way he is treated by health professionals (doctors, nurses, etc.), whether the patient participated in making decisions regarding his treatment and the information given to him when they were discharged.
It is reminded that the evaluation of GHS beneficiaries and the score that patients give to hospitals is taken into account when calculating the compensation of each hospital. This questionnaire is one of the qualitative criteria and indicators used by the HIO to determine the level of compensation of the System's hospitals.
As Mrs. Kyriacou said, "the beneficiaries who fill in the questionnaire are found to give a high score and are satisfied with the services offered by the GHS hospitals".
