It is over 30 years since I lost my heart to this beautiful country.

As a
carefree barefoot teenager and now as an adult, I fell in love with the
blue skies, fabulous mountains (I absolutely adore the mountains of
Epirus) and long beaches as well as it’s people. Greece will always be a
place of happiness for me. But I’ve seen the health system here a few
times with a poorly baby with pneumonia who grew into an asthmatic
child and who, as I write this, is an 18 year old with a nasty sinus
infection.

I’ll try to give you a bit of an insight into the health system here and it’s
growing similarities to the UK.

The Greek national health system provides health care through public
and state providers and contracted private providers of primary, hospital
and ambulatory care with the aim to ensure disease prevention and the
promotion, preservation, improvement, recovery and protection of
health.

I cannot stress enough the importance of having adequate travel

insurance and declaring any pre-existing conditions. We always think
we’ll never need them, but we very well might! The costs involved if not
covered can be enormous.

The Greek health care system never seemed easy to navigate, I’m grateful
that I’ve never had to navigate it alone.

Health Care here for residents is financed by the government budget,

social insurance contributions and private payments (and holiday
insurance for holiday makers)

Private providers are more common in primary care, especially in

diagnostic technologies, private physicians’ practices and pharmacies.

The National Organization for the Provision of Health Services (Greek

acronym EOPYY) negotiates contracts and remunerates health
professionals on the basis of a Health Benefits Regulation (Greek
acronym EKPY) providing the benefits basket for the beneficiaries of the
system.

The health benefits basket includes:

 medical treatment
 diagnostic/laboratory/clinical tests
 dental treatment
 physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, psychotherapy
 medication, consumables, dietary supplements, medical devices
 hospital treatment
 supplementary healthcare (orthopedics, eyeglasses, hearing aids,
prosthetics etc)
 long-term care
 obstetric care and ivf
 healthcare abroad
 vaccination programs

Primary healthcare is provided by:

 EOPYY- contracted private healthcare providers (doctors, diagnostic
centers, private clinics, chronic hemodialysis units)
 PEDY Units (National Primary Healthcare Network) – public
healthcare
 State hospitals, health centers, rural and regional medical units of the
National Health System (greek acronym ESY)
 Purely private health professionals, without a contract with EOPYY,
paid privately.

Contracted private doctors have a limit of 200 patients’ visits per month,
which will be remunerated by EOPYY, so prople may expect to pay
privately when visiting a contracted doctor who has reached the 200-
consultation cap for that particular month.

At the Pharmacy instead of a fixed prescription charge there is usually a

co-payment of 25% of the cost of medicines. Some patients’ groups, such
as those with some long term conditions and pregnant women, receive
medicines free of charge or pay a reduced co-payment.
In emergencies, people can go directly to a public hospital. The phone
line 166 provides information on which hospitals are on-call duty.
Urgent medical care is always free of charge.

Emergency ambulance (phone line 166) transport to a public hospital is

also free of charge.

Transport by air ambulance, which is the responsibility of the National

Centre for Emergency Care (greek acronym EKAV) is free of charge in
most cases, for example when having to be transported from an island
(more than 2.000 islands in Greece, more than 200 are inhabited) to the
mainland due to a critical health condition.

Since the end of 2017, Greece has established new community-based

primary health units, free at the point of access and known locally as
Topikes Monades Ygias or TOMYs.

The units are central to Greece’s newly implemented primary health care
(PHC) system and are the first point of contact and the main coordinator
of care.

Since registrations started more than 300,000 people have registered

with TOMYs and benefit from their services, and more than 1 million
have registered in the rest of the PHC services network, including health
centres and private practices. These numbers continue to grow.

A recent patient satisfaction survey conducted with WHO support

reveals that TOMYs have been well received – there is high user
satisfaction and demand has exceeded expectations.

At the TOMYs, multidisciplinary teams – general practitioners/family

doctors, paediatricians, nurses, health visitors and social workers –
provide patient centred health care, offering disease prevention, health
promotion, diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and care. The new units are
also gradually establishing clear referral mechanisms.

This is a major change from the otherwise fragmented network of

different public and private health providers and primarily specialists,
providing care upon request and with little coordination. In fact up until
about a year ago, antibiotics could be obtained over the counter, but this
was changed to prescription only and including monitoring by
pharmacies (Greece has one of the highest rates of antimicrobial
resistance in Europe).

Greece’s health system was deeply affected by the financial crisis, which
had a direct impact on access to health services, quality of care and
financial protection. Pressure from the crisis revealed long-term
problems in areas such as health governance and PHC provision.

In response to this, WHO and the Greek Ministry of Health joined efforts
to develop a proposal for comprehensive reform of primary health care,
as part of their mutual commitment towards advancing universal health
coverage. The new TOMYs are the outcome of this collaboration.

“This reform aims to shift the focus from treatment to prevention. It is

an evidence-based response to the health system’s crisis and to societal
demand for the elimination of health inequalities,” said the Minister of
Health Andreas Xanthos.

The newly-established community-based PHC network in Greece

complements the Greek government’s efforts to ensure access of the
uninsured population to public health care services. This not only
underlines that primary health care is still relevant and a necessary path
towards achieving universal health coverage, but it also sets the example
that investing in people-centred care helps countries to build sustainable
health systems.

These reforms and subsequent developments mirror the Primary Care

Network system in the UK to a degree. They show they that the key to
prevention of ill health sits with primary care, and multidisciplinary
teams working together around the patient.

We may be thousands of miles apart but heading in similar directions,

work