The Health Insurance Organisation (HIO) has prepared two questionnaires, one for patients and one for the doctors treating them, to assess the care given to General Health System (GHS) beneficiaries referred for treatment abroad. The aim is to build a fuller picture of the quality of that care and to identify where it needs to improve, HIO director Monica Kyriacou told Phileleftheros.
Both questionnaires use scored answers and will be used on an ongoing basis. Kyriacou said involving patients and doctors would provide “different but complementary information on the same health service”, which would help monitor and improve services abroad. The HIO also wants to improve care, the information patients receive and the continuity of their follow-up care once they return to Cyprus, she said.
In the patients’ questionnaire, they will first be asked to rate whether the information they received about their diagnosis and treatment was clear and complete, and then to score the services they were given. They will also assess how well their relatives or carers were kept informed about their condition and care during their hospital stay or at discharge. The conduct of medical and nursing staff has a prominent place in the questionnaire, and patients will be able to add optional comments.
The second questionnaire, for the doctors treating them, will ask whether the treatment approach used abroad was fully, adequately or partially appropriate. Doctors will also record the patient’s clinical condition after treatment and assess how clear the discharge instructions for follow-up care were.
