Filenews 29 April 2025 - by Marilena Panayi
As of June 1st, the data will change in all Accident and Emergency Departments, public and private, that offer services through the General Health System, while in the public sector the institution of category 2 A&E has also begun to operate, with the Nicosia General Hospital already offering these services to citizens from April 1st.
The presence or availability of doctors of specific specialties from June 1 will be considered mandatory, while GHS hospitals that have A&E services will have the opportunity to increase their salaries by up to €20 per case, if they manage to meet a series of quality criteria that are implemented in the context of a specific plan.
Specifically, and according to the plan, the availability, on a 24-hour basis, of doctors who hold the following specialty will be mandatory:
–Pathology.
–Cardiology.
– General Surgery.
– Orthopaedics and Radiology.
At the same time, each A&E must have doctors on a daily basis at least one of its specialties:
–Neurology.
–Paediatrics.
– Intensive Care Medicine,
– Radiology (with the possibility of performing invasive radiology operations).
In relation to the quality of services, the Health Insurance Organization has already defined specific criteria which were approved yesterday after a discussion by the Board of Directors of the Organization.
Among the criteria, the waiting time of patients in the A&E waiting room, the time they stay in the Department until discharge or transfer to a ward for hospitalization, the time that elapses between the arrival of a patient by ambulance and the release of the ambulance and finally the evaluation of the A&E services by the patients themselves.
In addition, the plan provides that the A&E will be evaluated for:
>> The time that elapses between the process of sorting and the management by medical and nursing personnel.
>> The percentage of patients who leave before or after screening without being managed by the Department.
>> The percentage of patients who visit any A&E within 72 hours of their previous visit.
The specific criteria have been determined by the HIO after consultation with the hospitals that operate A&E within the framework of the GHS. Each of the qualitative criteria has a different weight in the context of the Organization's plan for the calculation of the final compensation of the A&M.
All non-emergencies end up in category 2 A&E
As for the category 2 A&E Department, which completes this week, one month of operation, information from "F" states that it has already begun to cover a significant percentage (around 20%) of patients who come to the Nicosia General Hospital for First Aid services. This Department serves patients who, during the screening process, are found to belong to categories 4 and 5.
These categories include incidents in which the patient needs service for a non-threatening situation. For example, someone who has had an accident in the leg undergoes an X-ray, etc. or incidents that only require medical examination.
The ability to submit patients to diagnostic tests is the main difference between the Category 2 Departments and the on-call clinics that operate on weekends and holidays within the framework of the General Health System.
According to information from "F", the operation of the Category 2 Department at the Nicosia General Hospital, from April 1st until the end of last week, was considered very successful and it is a matter of hours to announce the expansion of the institution to other districts.
It is recalled that a few months ago, the possibility of operating A&E of different categories was also discussed at the level of the Parliamentary Committee on Health in order to decongest the existing Departments and serve the real emergencies without long wait. At the moment, the operation of category 2 A&E concerns only state hospitals.
