After the “afternoon surgeries”, Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis plans to organize troupes of “famous” surgeons, who will travel from hospital to hospital across the country in order to operate patients.
In recent years, with the constant departures of doctors due to retirement or resignation from the Greek National Public Hospital System (NHS) and the non-filling of organic positions, it became “normal” that doctors have to travel to temporarily work in other hospitals many kilometers away to fill the gaps.
In fact, in many cases doctors are forced to travel at their own expense several kilometers away from the place of their organic position to serve in another hospital that is dramatically short of personnel.
For example, pathologists from Patras and Tripoli Hospitals cover the Pyrgos Hospital, pathologists from “Venizelio” in Heraklion cover the Rethymno Hospital. The Intensive Care Unit of the Agrinio hospital is supported by intensivists from Ioannina.
“The situation with the arbitrary orders of the administration of the 4th Ministry of Health for forced daily movements of Pathologists from hospitals in Thessaloniki to hospitals in Xanthi and Drama, has exceeded any limit of danger for patients and for doctors. Colleagues are forced to drive for hours to get to Xanthi and Drama, to receive 60 patients whose history they do not know, to visit until the evening and at the same time to be called to the emergency room, since the hospital is on duty every day, for outpatients. The next day suffering from exhaustion, they to Thessaloniki trying not to fall asleep at the wheel”, said a statement issued on Thursday morning by the Federation of Associations of Hospital Doctors of Greece (OENGE).
“Celebrity” surgeons on the road
Now, in order to deal with the extremely long lists of patients waiting for a surgery – over 120,000 people – and as part of the operation of the “afternoon surgeries” paid by the patient whether insured or not, Minister Adonis Georgiadis, has announced that he will create a system of traveling “celebrity” doctors, as he described them, who will actually travel not just from hospital to hospital, but they will also change for one week of the regional Health Department.
“Within the part of the reforms, we are currently trying to build the new NHS?ESY. It’s not just the afternoon surgeries, the afternoon surgeries are a part,” Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis said on Wednesday, in a television show.
“If the patient does not have the financial means and cannot come to a large hospital in Athens or Thessaloniki, should we forever deny him the possibility of having the surgery he needs? No, it is our responsibility to solve his problem”, he added.
In this sense, part of the reform, as the minister explained, will be to allow surgical teams from one NHS hospital to go and operate in other hospitals.
“So because you can’t have the best neurosurgeons, the best surgeons, the best thoracic surgeons everywhere, you can’t do that. We will allow an example group of Evangelismos hospital in Athens to get together and form a group. I say an example, and go for a week and operate in Kavala, northern Greece. And he said guys because you who are from Kavala and want to have the doctors who are famous doctors of the National Health Service and they are the good ones and the whole surgical team, then come over here [for an operation]“, concluded the Minister of Health.
Legal measures by the doctors
According to an announcement by the OENGE the tragic understaffing of the Xanthi and Drama hospitals is the full and exclusive responsibility of the Ministers of Health in recent years, as well as the administration of the Health Department in charge.
“To cover up these criminal responsibilities, they continue to commit crimes, exposing both the patients of Xanthi and Drama, as well as the doctors of Thessaloniki, to danger every day. All appeals have been exhausted, which authorities defiantly ignore,”OENGE stressed.
Hospital doctors also plan a work out in the next couple of days.
The association interlined that it proceeds with legal measures against the commander of the health department in charge, stressing “We will prevent tragedy before it happens.”
PS and if you happen to have an appointment with a “famous” surgeon arranged long long time ago, you may face another delay because your surgeon has been ordered to a week-long ‘operation tour’.
