Dr. Theodoros Potamitis – who has just been elected President of the new Board of Directors of the Cyprus Association of Private Physicians (ENIK) – aims to further improve the provision of medical services in Cyprus, private sector cooperation and OAY/GESS, and to change the image it has the world for the medical community in our place. “The level of medicine in Cyprus is high. Our mortality and complication rates are low. But, we do not have a control system to identify those doctors – which is a small percentage but capable of creating big problems – who have high rates of complications either due to inexperience or because they do not have the skills. My vision is to see the medical practice checked in this place. To have quality control at all stages, inside and outside GESS, something that is relatively easy to do. They need money, but certainly much less than all that is wasted every day on unnecessary medical procedures, tests, etc. “And the Ministry of Health must set up such a department,” said the doctor, when asked about his priorities as the new president of ENIK. Dr. Theodoros Potamitis is an ophthalmologist specializing in vitreous surgery and co-founder of the PANTHEO Ophthalmological Center where he works. We asked him a series of questions:
& # 8211; Members of ENIK are the doctors who stayed out of GESS and fight the System day and night?
This is exactly the image we want to change. There is also polarization between the medical community. On the one hand it is the good and honest Robin Hood of GESS who will save the world and on the other the bad guys, the Sheriffs of Nottingham, who want to destroy the System. This is not the case at all. This is, unfortunately, the image that some people want to create for the private sector. For example, recently, in relation to the eight cases of cataracts that presented complications, the representative of OKYPY came out and said that the private sector made them mad and for & # 8217; this is what the people ended up in Makareio, to get the chestnuts out of the fire the public sector. He did not say, however, that all the complications of Makareios, for the last 20 years, are being sent to us. Because we do not go out to say it on TV? At least let them be silent. It is known that the public sector has some weaknesses & # 8211; I do not judge him, I just make a finding. So there must be mutual respect and mutual support. I love this country, I love this profession, and I want a class to come in so that there is control and that impunity stops.
Wrong picture
& # 8211; Who's responsible for the private sector doctors being on the wrong side?
We are on the side of evil, because the image has been given that the doctors who have been left out of GESS, the private ones, are the great doctors, the sharks, the tax evaders, the thieves. Nothing to do with reality. I am sincerely glad that a health system has started to be implemented in our country and it was expected that it would have terrible problems, due to the way it has been set up. I am not against GESS, I am not against OAY, those people have worked very hard, they spent days and nights negotiating, their work was and is very difficult. Yes they made mistakes, expected of someone trying to set up a System from scratch. And now that we are at this point, it is time for cooperation and coexistence. We have to stop taking their eyes off them, both sides are necessary.
& # 8211; If all doctors agree with GESS, this war may end.
The biggest evil that can be done in our country is for all doctors to enter GESS. That is when the System will collapse. It must be understood that the private sector helps GESS, as it absorbs part of the workload, which means shorter waiting lists and savings. What bothers us is that the OAU turns a blind eye to some mafias, illegalities, such as the practice of private medicine within the GESS, to perform surgeries with multiple use of disposable consumables. Unacceptable things! We are bothered by the abuse in GESS and the unfair competition.
Why outside?
& # 8211; Why haven't you signed a contract with GESS?
I thought about it very seriously and finally decided to stay out. We could not cope with the volume of work we would have due to our membership in GESS and we did not want to lower our standards, the quality of our work. It also bothers me that there is no control, justification and evaluation within GESS. Everyone does everything, without giving an account to anyone. In the United Kingdom, for example, every five years a doctor is screened by a special scientific committee and has to prove that he is still good at what he does. You may be the most famous medical professor in the country, they will ask you for the list of patients you operated on, the complications, the conferences you went to in the last five years, how many points you collected from the conferences you went to and updated your knowledge. This is what Germany and France and so many countries with a history of health systems are doing. And it is the responsibility of the Pancyprian Medical Association and ENIK and the Ministry of Health and the OAU, the control and evaluation. At the moment, because we do not have control and evaluation, the image of the whole GESS, but also of private medicine, is being tarnished. Those who abuse the System should be severely punished.
& # 8211; What does severe punishment mean?
In other countries, for example the English patient, the German patient, will rarely go to another doctor for a second opinion. The doctor tells him e.g. you have cataracts and you have to have surgery, he will not question him, he does not want any other doctor to see him. Why; Because in his country if a doctor is a liar, a thief, incompetent, the System will find him and throw him out. To practice medicine, means that one has passed and passes many tests. And the punishment is so severe that you do not dare to do anything. In England, even for minor misdemeanors, the System does not give you a simple punishment, it takes your license to practice. And to clarify here that whoever e.g. has a high degree of complications, does not mean that it has a problem. A medical center/hospital can be so important that the most difficult cases end up there and thus the complication rate goes up. The more the reputation of a doctor/medical center increases, the more difficult cases come close to him. All this will be seen in a systematic audit and a serious evaluation.
Limits are needed
& # 8211; What's wrong with wanting to get more medical advice?
I did not say that it is bad, I mean that the GESS must have limits in order not to collapse, to be financially viable. They have bombed the world that it is a System that allows the patient to do whatever he wants, as many times as he wants, to whomever he wants. And now this is what the beneficiaries are doing. They go to the doctor and demand alpha and beta and gamma, whether they need it or not. Nobody told them that there would be limits. One must come forward and honestly explain to the world that there is no possibility of unlimited tests, only the necessary and for & # 8217; these will be decided by the doctor. Whoever does not like and wants more, go to pay and do it. In England, where the NHS is 70 years old, to go see a specialist you must first see your family doctor and he will choose whether to go to the specialist or not. The beneficiary with 25 euros can not go to any specialist and charge the System with the world exams. It would be better to have a small charge & # 8211; supplementation is a way of controlling abuse. It is applied in Germany, in Australia, in the Netherlands, in many countries, and I think it would be better suited in Cyprus. And of course it is the issue of protocols that should have been ready before the start of the GESS and not even today everyone should apply what they consider right, without protocols.
