The delay in completing the healthcare sector reform poses a huge threat to the smooth functioning of the General Health System (GHS) and its balance, emphasized the Federation of Patient Associations of Cyprus.
They underscored that “without legislation regulating the operation of healthcare service structures, without the operation of independent management and supervision structures of healthcare services, the GHS will never achieve balance, and certainly, we will never be able to see the real distortions and gaps that the system may have in order to make proper corrections.”
Speaking to Phileleftheros, the secretary of the Cyprus Federation of Patients’ Associations (CyFPA), Marios Charalambides, placed both the Government and the Parliament before their responsibilities.
“We shout out that from 2017 until today the Ministry of Health has not promoted the necessary bills. We must remind that several of the bills pending in the Parliament have been going back and forth for many years. In order to have legislation at some point, soon, we need to see determination and willingness from the parliamentary parties,” he said.
He referred to bills concerning the operation of rehabilitation centers, the operation of radiodiagnostic centers, the operation of hospitals, the operation of palliative care centers, and the operation of clinical laboratories, adding, “Furthermore, we have the establishment of the independent Authority that will manage ambulances, the completion of the preparation and operation of the National Center for Clinical Documentation, the establishment of the National Pharmaceutical Authority, and other reforms that will certainly help the healthcare sector to operate much better.”
“At the moment,” he emphasized, “we operate within the GHS without an independent authority managing ambulances. We operate within the GHS without effective control over radiodiagnostic centers, as there is no law governing their operation, and even more seriously, we operate with an outdated legislation for hospitals. That is, the hospitals operating today in Cyprus operate under a law which essentially does not include any provisions regarding the quality of services. There are no clear criteria for the operation of public health centers, there are no provisions determining criteria for accessibility to persons with disabilities or other persons with mobility problems, etc. How can we ensure the quality of services when we do not have criteria on which to base the control we will perform? That is, when there is no specialized legislation for the operation of radiodiagnostic centers, there are no criteria for infrastructure, suitability of equipment, how can we then control the quality of the results of these centers?”
“Last week,” he said, “we had a meeting with the President of the Republic. Priorities and timelines were set. We know that the Minister of Health is promoting specific bills. We expect the preparation to be completed and for these bills to finally reach the Parliament, and we also expect that the Parliament will understand the need for the completion of the reform and that we will not constantly encounter obstacles related to partisan or other interests. The back-and-forth of bills from the Ministry to the Parliament and back must stop.”
