The Health Insurance Organization is making changes to the process of pre-approval and prescription of injectable drugs for diabetes, in an effort to limit the serious delays that have been observed lately in the examination of doctors' requests for their diabetic patients.
The issue had provoked strong reactions from both doctors and patients, with complaints to the Cyprus Federation of Patients' Associations for waiting which, in several cases, reached four to five weeks, even for changes in the dosage of the drug.
According to the new instructions of the HIO, doctors must now submit a request for pre-approval at the same time and for all available forces of the injectable drug, in order to avoid the need for a new procedure every time a modification of the dose is required.
Although the approval will be given for all forces at the same time, the doctor will be able to prescribe only one force at a time, while in case of a change in the dosage, the first prescription must be cancelled, so that errors do not appear in the GHS software.
The problem had seen the light of day at the end of April when complaints had been submitted to OSAK by several doctors who had been waiting for approval of the requests they had submitted on behalf of their patients for a period of more than a month.
In some cases, as the doctors claimed, their patients were forced to stop their treatment while waiting for a response from the Organization.
On the part of the HIO, the problem had been publicly acknowledged and assurances were given for corrections to the process, which, as it is ascertained, has been done, which is why yesterday's briefing of the doctors followed.
