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IKA hospitals and five state ones merge and the number of organizations for social care is reduced

31 May 2011 / 20:05:41  GRReporter
3404 reads

Marina Nikolova

Since the Prime Minister Andreas Loverdos took the reins of the health system the Ministry of Health achievements include a refugees’ settlement in Lavrio, a merger of hospitals and organizations for social care and prosecutions for the spending of government money.

The health insurance fund IKA has five hospitals that it is unable to manage and tomorrow they will be merged with five state hospitals and their staff will be moved, said the Minister of Health. Four of IKA hospitals are located in Athens and one in Thessaloniki. They will be merged without affecting the employment rights of their employees and this will facilitate the patients insured with IKA.

A series of reforms that are already established by laws are being implemented already. The most important is the establishment of the organization of health services which the Minister announced will become running from the 1st of September this year. On that date, all doctors who will be included in the organization of health services will be able to write prescriptions for patients regardless of their insurance fund, and the prices of services and medications will be equal. Another big change which the Ministry is undertaking it to separate the health from the pension insurance system. Currently, the health pension fund IKA is flowing money to stabilize its health system with the money coming from the pension insurances, which is not done in any other country in the world and it will be changed, said Minister Loverdos.

The organization of health services, which will have its own annual budget of 8 billion euros, is expected to increase the quality of health services for patients and reduce spending. The Deputy Minister Georgios Koutroumanis announced that the data from the beginning of the reforms are encouraging and stated that healthcare spending dropped by 1.077 billion euros in 2010, and that costs should fall to 7.2 billion euros by the end of this year given that they were in the amount of 10.6 billion in 2009. Minister Koutroumanis said that after the new organization starts operating the prices of medicines and services will be equal, as it is impossible each insurance fund to work with different price list.

Until now the Ministry of Health has appointed a director and a deputy director of the new united organization and the employees of IKA hospitals were transferred to the new hospitals, where they will perform their duties from tomorrow. The important decisions about the employment contracts of all doctors and staff of the organization should be taken between the 1st of June and the 1st of September when the organization will start functioning. Another important date is the 1st of January, 2012, when it is expected that the health system will be fully separated from the pension system. The Minister of Health underlined the contribution of IKA’s director Robertos Spiropoulos for the merger of hospitals. Spiropoulos, in turn, added that the reform separating the health and the pension funds should be carried out more than 75 years ago.

Besides the announcement of the united organization of health services, Minister Loverdos stated that the small settlement of houses for the refugees sheltered in Lavrio has completed. The refugees shelter in Lavrio is ready to collapse and it will not withstand an earthquake greater than 4 degrees on the Richter scale, alarmed Loverdos. But although the settlement is consistent with the requirements of the refugees as there are mothers with children among them, they do not want to move now, said Loverdos.

The report of the Ministry on the work done and on the coming actions is not over yet. Tomorrow at 10:30 am the Minister of Health together with other staff from the Ministry will submit evidence to the prosecution of violations made by employees of the national healthcare system and associated with public funds squandering.
 
The Ministry has also contributed to the merger of 91 public organizations for social care and their number was reduced to 22. 13 of these 22 organizations will support people with special needs and 9 will support children and families. The aim is to reduce bureaucracy, to make the procedures faster, to use the staff and resources more effectively, and provide better services for people. In this way, there will be one organization for social care for people with disabilities and one organization for social care for children and families in each administrative area.

Tags: NewsSocietyHealth careHospitalsSocial careChildren and familiesPeople with disabilitesMergerRefugeesSettlementMedicines
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