With threats and blackmails, Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis has been desperately trying to fill gaps and personnel shortages in public hospitals during the tourist season. The Minister’s policy has angered the medical world in the country, and now doctors are launching an “unofficial” strike. The big loser are, of course: the patients in need of prescription drugs and laboratory or screening tests.
The dispute started when Georgiadis tried to force private doctors to work for the National Health Service, mainly for a ‘few’ on duty services in Emergency shifts per month in public hospitals and health centers.
He has threatened doctors to proceed to their requisition due to Emergency Times, to expel them form the national health care system EOPY and deprive them of the right to issue electronic prescriptions for medications and tests.
A zealous supporter of private medical care USA style, the Minister has been dismantling the public health care system with several decisions such as extend the time of prescription blood tests even for oncology or blood patients, to increase prices in non-prescription drugs, and has not proceed to the hiring of doctors and nursing staff claiming that there are jobs openings but nobody applies. At the same time, he has not improved neither the salaries nor the working conditions for the staff essential for the operation of the public health care system.
Realizing that doctors’ shortage – mainly of general practitioners, anesthesiologists, cardiologists and radiologists – in hospitals where millions of tourists flock could damage ‘the image of Greece abroad’, he decided to force private doctors to do their “duty to the state that has paid their studies,” as he recently claimed.
“Doctors ow to the State, they should work at public facilities even without pay,” the talkative Minister claimed, obviously forgetting that education in Greece is financed by the citizens’ taxes.
Anyway, Georgiadis threatened those doctors who refuse to do their “duty” in summer 2024 where -allegedly- “emergency situation prevails”, to expel them from the National Health Care System EOPY and to block them from issuing prescription medicine and tests.
Note that many of these doctors have been registered in the “personal doctor” system – another project of the conservative New Democracy government, that has largely failed and has been partially put on ice.
At the end, the minister’s stubbornness prevailed and tabled a relevant legislation to force the private doctors to work in public hospitals to the Parliament. The legislation is to be voted on upcoming Monday, July 29, 2024.
Doctors react with anger
Doctors fiercely reacted to minister Georgiadis’s “authoritarian and dangerous policies” as they said.
From Friday, July 26, until the voting of the legislation, they will launch an “unofficial strike” where they will refrain from issuing prescriptions for medication and tests. Furthermore, they will appeal to justice.
Either …or, doctors can issue handwritten prescriptions, that is outside the IDIKA electronic system. But in this case, patients will have to pay the full price for medications, screening, blood tests or anything else.
The confrontation between doctors and the Minister cause concern in the government camp.
High-ranking government officials are reportedly deeply concerned by the dimension that this dispute has reached and efforts are being made to find a “golden solution” before the situation goes completely out of control.
“We’re are the peak of the tourism season and the minister still tries to fill the gaps in hospitals personnel,” a doctor unionist told media on Wednesday.
The conflict seems to lean in favor of the doctors and not the government, anyway.
That is why efforts continue to find private doctors who will accept to work in public structures in areas where basic specialties such as Pathology are lacking.
Patients at risk
“We doctors will do our job. We will serve the citizens with handwritten prescriptions”, the president of the EOPYY Physicians’ Union (ENI-EOPYY), Anna Mastorakou, told protothema.gr. She highlighted that the problem that arises effects for the citizen and not the doctor.
If the right to electronic prescription is suspended, citizens will be able to get a handwritten prescription, but they will not be reimbursed for medicines and tests. That is, they will pay themselves for the treatments or tests they have to do, Mastorakou stressed.
According to her, if it is assumed that in a small region of the country no private person accepts to contribute to the NHS, then the right to electronic prescriptions will be removed from all doctors, therefore the citizens of this region will not have access to health services .
Especially in remote areas, they will then have to seek the public facilities often several kilometers away and get an appointment with the doctor they need but they will be hard to find.
A similar problem is expected to occur if doctors “go down” in protests, as again citizens will not have electronic prescriptions and will have to pay for medicines and tests.
The President of Medical Association, Athanasios Hexadaktylos, a member and supporter of ND, said that the promoted regulations will make problematic areas of country even less attractive, even for the private sector.
“If the provision is activated, then there will be an absolute blackout,” Hexadaltylos warned, adding among others, that the problem of shortages concerns 12 months and not the three summer months.
Can private doctors manage Emergency Duty shifts?
One further problem is whether private doctors who have been away from the stressful situation in hospitals for years or decades can manage Emergency Duty shifts.
According to media reports, two 80-year-old retired private doctors were called to work in the emergency service of hospitals in south and central Greece. The first doctor politely denied saying that he could not cope with such a situation, while the second one said he wants to be hired and not work as free-lancer [where he would have to start a business again for a few months!]
To a call by the public hospital in Xanthi, north-eastern Greece, for 20 private doctors to work for 2 duty shift per month, just 10 responded, with three of them being over 70 years old.
It should be noted that the Panhellenic Medical Association has called on doctors throughout the country not to prescribe and issue or execute referrals from Friday, July 26 until the passing of the bill in the Plenary of the Parliament.
In a last minute development on Wednesday afternoon, Georgiadis said that if doctors respond to his call , he will not activate the legislation for their requisition.
Note that the doctors shortages in hospitals has turned into a notorious problems for Greece, and that media reports have been highlighting the problem especially on the big islands before the tourist season started,
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