Seven years after the implementation of the General Health System, 66.8% of the adult beneficiaries of the System have not gained access to their electronic file in the GHS software. In fact, thousands of beneficiaries appear in the software, staying at the operating address of the clinic and having the email address of their personal doctor, as a result of which they do not even receive the necessary information about the entries made in their name by the health service providers who serve them.
In detail and according to the data obtained by "F", until the end of May 2026 and while the registration of the largest mass of beneficiaries in the GHS took place in April 2019, 853,989 beneficiaries were registered in the personal doctor list. Of these, only 292,216 had their beneficiary file connected. This means that only 34.22% of active adult beneficiaries of the GHS have their file connected.
"The non-connection of the file also affects the direct contact of the beneficiary with the System," the head of the Communication Department of the HIO, Alexia Makridou, told "F". "When the file is not connected, it means that the beneficiary does not have access to information and data related to his health. He does not have access to test results or even to the registrations of the health providers who serve him within the GHS."
In addition, and because at the beginning of the implementation of the GHS, several personal doctors, in order to facilitate their beneficiaries, proceeded to register in the System themselves, the addresses of their personal doctors appear in the files as the addresses of the beneficiaries, postal and/or electronic. In some rarer cases, the phone numbers of doctors or other people who registered a beneficiary in the System are now registered.
"Where the beneficiary himself has not connected his file, he cannot access it in order to update this data. As a result, valuable information is lost since after each registration of a provider for services to a citizen, the system sends relevant information via e-mail or in some cases also via text messages to mobile phones".
Finally, the beneficiary "may also lose important information which is channelled through the GHS software by the Ministry of Health. Indicative is the example of the colon cancer population screening program in which the files sent by the Ministry of Health to citizens never reached their recipients because the address entered was incorrect since the citizens changed their place of residence."
The president of the Cyprus Federation of Patients' Associations, Miltos Miltiadou, also appealed to citizens to connect their files to the GHS beneficiary portal.
The GHS, said Mr. Miltiadous, "gave each beneficiary, for the first time, the opportunity to have continuous and unhindered access to their own medical data through their electronic file in the System". By connecting the file to the GHS beneficiary portal, he explained, "the citizen sees the results of his tests for himself and has a picture of what the doctors register in his name and knows, at any time, what is happening with his health".
At the same time, "he receives important messages, such as invitations for preventive examinations, which are sent through the System and we all understand the importance of this process", while, at the same time, he is informed about anything that is registered and concerns him.
"With this information, and we must mention it, the beneficiary can also exercise some kind of control over the GHS, since he can monitor what is recorded by the providers that serve him and in case he detects an error he has the right to intervene by informing the HIO."
"One in three beneficiaries has connected their file. But it is a large portion of beneficiaries who have not yet done so. The Cyprus Federation of Patients' Associations invites them to proceed with the necessary process which is easy and is done only once. All information on how to connect the beneficiary file is posted on the GHS website, while citizens can also be informed about it by their personal doctor who will guide them."
