Association

When Enik was initialy formed a few years ago the YESY was in its planning stages and the medical community was in the process of trying to guide the authorities in creating a system that was functional and beneficial for both our patients and our profession.  Despite all our efforts most of our suggestions were ignored and we have today a system that is struggling to survive and a state hospital system that is on the brink of collapse.  It is pointless to now continue to analyse what could have been.  We need to move with the times and continue forward with doing what we do best and that is provide high quality care to our patients.

The need for the existence of a well organised and functioning private sector will always remain a necessity as it is a necessity in many other countries with far better and more mature health care systems than ours.  No matter what sector we are dealing with, any state funded system that is aimed at providing mass population services will always be limited by central funding and will be plagued by inefficiency.  This is why most modern countries are today turning to the private sector for help.  In our country the private health care system has been at the forefront of every development and has been the driving force for maintaining health care standards equivalent to our other European partners.  The state hospitals although underfunded and overloaded were in some sectors providing excellent care, unfortunately this is now a thing of the past.  State hospitals were completely unprepared for what was to come and we all see daily the consequences of this lack of foresight.

Our aim must now be to continue to apply pressure to implement changes that will make health provision more efficient and of the highest possible standards for our patients.  To achieve this, we need to remain united and act as a whole. 

Our first aim is to gain the right of our patients to have their drug prescriptions and investigations executed within the YESY.  This right belongs to every citizen who contributes to the YESY without choice.

Our ultimate goal will be to see a system that allows patients to use their entitlement in the system transferred to any clinic or doctor of their choosing.  This will provide a healthy and fair level of competition amongst all health care providers and will ultimately reduce health care costs.

The road ahead is difficult and we will face many obstacles.  The politics of health care provision are often an issue on which elections are won and lost.  This is why we need to always act in the best interest of our patients and make sure that they know it.  On a daily basis we witness a change in the attitude towards private health care and it has become obvious to all that we were not the ones that placed financial gain above all else.

The attainment of our goal will not be easy, but if there is something that characterises our profession, it is our ability to deal with difficult situations.  Afterall that is the reason we chose to study medicine in the first place and that is the reason we chose to remain in the private sector when we returned to our country.  I feel confident, that we will ones again prevail, because what we are asking for, is just for both us and our patients and it will allow us to maintain the high level of care which took years of hard work to achieve.

Theodoros Potamitis

President