Filenews 23 January 2025
Citizens do not respond to the call of the Health Insurance Organization to evaluate the services they receive through the General Health System. In fact, the percentage of patients who fill in the satisfaction questionnaire sent to them electronically after being served by the GHS hospitals this year is lower than last year's, already low percentage, falling from almost 6% to 5%.
This fact is of particular concern to the HIO and already, as we are informed, various proposals are on the table regarding ways that will help increase the response rate of citizens to the completion of satisfaction questionnaires.
It is reminded that very short questionnaires for patients' satisfaction with the quality of the services they receive will also be included in the quality criteria expected to be applied for the Accident and Emergency Departments, which makes the need for decisions to be taken without delay imperative.
The prevailing scenario, at the moment, seems to be the sending of a text message to the beneficiaries of the GHS, along with the sending of the questionnaire via e-mail in order to facilitate citizens in completing it.
Upgrading the quality of health services offered through the GHS is the HIO's main goal for 2025, Stavros Michael, chairman of the organization's board of directors, told F. "But in order to achieve this, we need to have, among other things, the cooperation of our own beneficiaries," he added.
«Very soon we will announce the results of all the qualitative criteria and indicators applied to hospitals and are linked to the level of their compensation. This is enough data that we will make public so that citizens are also aware of the real picture. What concerns us most, however, is the cooperation of the citizens themselves. When we observe that only 5% of people receiving inpatient care give answers to the questionnaire sent electronically, we cannot say that we are satisfied. A similar questionnaire will soon be included for the services of the Accident and Emergency Departments. For us at the HIO, patients' opinion is a very basic indicator to know where and when and how to intervene and make the changes that are deemed necessary, because our concern must and is our beneficiaries".
The citizens, "the beneficiaries of the GHS, must participate in this whole process of evaluating the services so that we, as the HIO, have the real picture that emerges from their own experience".
The HIO, in the context of recording the results of GHS hospitals, always in relation to the quality criteria and indicators applied in the context of their compensation system, will, as we are informed, proceed in the coming days to an inspection of all hospitals of the System in order to record on the spot the data relating to safety and quality indicators. These indicators include mortality rates, complications after surgery, rates of hospital-acquired infections, etc.
The checks that will be carried out will in fact concern the confirmation through examination of the data recorded by the hospitals of their patients with the data that the hospitals themselves submitted to the HIO in relation to the specific indicators in the context of the compensation system.
