Filenews 12 December 2025 - by Marilena Panayi
The new procedure of the Health Insurance Organization was implemented on Tuesday, according to which, chronic and seriously ill patients will be able to obtain stocks of medicines from hospital pharmacies, enough to cover the needs of two months and not one month, as was the case until today and as it continues to apply to all other prescriptions issued within the General Health System and executed by private pharmacies.
The new procedure will have a gradual implementation, starting with specific treatments involving cancer patients, patients with multiple sclerosis and patients with haematological diseases.
According to the relevant information of the HIO to doctors and hospital pharmacies, these preparations will be registered by doctors in the GHS IT system with the indication "2MEN".
The possibility of bi-monthly execution concerns, for the time being, the anticancer dasatinib 70 mg, the preparations interferon beta-1a at doses of 22 mcg and 44 mcg, which are widely used in the treatment of multiple sclerosis, as well as a number of lenalidomide products (in doses of 10 mg, 15 mg and 25 mg) administered to patients with haematological diseases.
The list also includes teriflunomide 14 mg, for patients with multiple sclerosis.
With the activation of the new procedure, the pharmacist of hospital pharmacies can now perform two repetitions of the same monthly prescription at the same time, as long as the attending physician has registered at least two repetitions during a prescription.
The two repetitions can be done either on the same day or on different dates, provided that the time limit of 40 days from the date of issuance of the original prescription is not exceeded. (The generic replacement feature continues to apply normally and is not affected by the new feature.)
According to the HIO, for prescriptions that include more than two repetitions, the IT system determines successive execution time limits in order to ensure the smooth continuation of the treatment and to prevent the risk of its interruption.
As pointed out in the relevant announcement of the HIO, prescriptions issued before the implementation of the new procedure and not marked "2MEN", cannot be executed in a bi-monthly quantity. In these cases, a cancellation and reissue by the doctor is required.
It is recalled that the supply of stocks for two months to chronic patients served by hospital pharmacies (mainly by state pharmacies), was a request of the Cyprus Federation of Patients' Associations, which had reached a relevant agreement with the HIO almost three years ago.
As the Organization states, "the new procedure aims to facilitate patients with serious conditions, reducing the frequency of visits to hospital pharmacies and offering greater flexibility in the management of their treatment."
With the implementation of the new procedure, it is expected that the state pharmacies that are congested every month, when hundreds of patients come en masse to receive their medicines, will also be largely decongested.
The bi-monthly prescriptions will gradually include additional treatments, which patients obtain only from hospital pharmacies.
