Greece will pay by the year’s end all hospital debts accumulated with medical suppliers from 2005 up to last month. The nation plans to keep closer tabs on such costs in 2011, as stated bya senior health ministry official to Reuters on Friday. “Our aim is to start on a different basis in 2011,” the Health Ministry’s General Secretary Nikos Polyzos said in an interview. “It’s a tough task but I believe we will make it.” Polyzos who ranks fourth in the department behind the minister and the minister’s two deputies, said debts from 2005, 2006 and the first half of 2007 had almost been paid off this year, at a cost of 1.5 billion euros.
Greece spends 25 billion euros per year; roughly 10% of GDP on healthcare. Half of this goes to the private sector. Keeping medical supply costs in check is a priority for 2011 Polyzos said, adding that hospitals’ operating costs had already been cut to 2.6 billion euros this year from 3 billion euros in 2009.
By December the country is attempting to fully computerize financial services at the country’s 130 state hospitals, long considered tarnished by corruption. Money has fallen through the cracks in Greece’s state hospital sector for many years. “It will be a great success if we fully computerize 100 hospitals by the end of Q1,” he said. Patients often have to pay hundreds of euros in what are effectively bribes, the so-called “fakelaki”, or little envelopes, to secure fair treatment. Additionally a lack of credible accounting facilitates profiteering through the overpricing of medical supplies.
State healthcare centres offer the next grade of care down from hospitals. The centres had about 18 million visits in 2009. Polyzos is a former hospital manager and expects a 10% rise this year. This is due to patients turning to cheaper options in the aftermath of the country’s worst recession in decades.
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