2 weeks Ago
Dozens of patients suffering from diabetes found themselves unable to access their medications due to a double failure of the health services’ online system which continues to be unreliable for months, Plutarchos Georgiades, head of the pharmacists’ association said on Monday. Speaking on CyBC’s morning radio, Georgiades said the fault was brought to his attention on Friday around 5.30pm when overnight pharmacists noticed the Gesy (state health services) page was not loading.
“I contacted the [online] system department and they said they were working to resolve the issue,” Geogiades said. However, the following day on Saturday, once more pharmacists started to call in complaining that the system was down. This time around, it was explained by a scheduled maintenance which was supposed to be carried out overnight with the system up and running by 8am on Sunday.
“Both chemists and patients are being inconvenienced, or worse, by these failures which have been ongoing since September,” Georgiades said. The initial issue had mainly concerned patients diagnosed as diabetic and who require prompt access to their medication, he added. Georgiades suggested that a system be enacted whereby a patient in urgent need could pay out of pocket, keeping the doctor’s prescription and a payment receipt as proof to be refunded once the system comes back online.
Director of information technology at the health insurance organisation (HIO) Marios Tziakouris, for his part, told the CyBC that the system had been shut down on Saturday night for a programmed upgrade scheduled to last from 11pm to 3am Sunday, which however “took several hours longer” with the system being functional again by midday on Sunday. “The contracted company in charge said they were working to eliminate the issues,” he said. As for the initial system failure on Friday, it had been due to new parameters which had been introduced for patients to be considered diagnosable diabetics, he said.
The new parameters, which had been enacted as a result of a medical decision, had caused issues to providers and had since been removed, pending being reinstated in a more effective manner, he said. “There is concern and we have had several problems since October,” Tziakouris said, explaining that the IT contracted company “lost a significant member of the team and are trying to cover the knowledge gap.” “This troubles us as the system worked very well in the past, and we can’t after five to six years of operation be having problems which affect service.
We are cooperating to support the contractor to resolve the issues as risks are also attached to [alternative] choices,” he said. The HIO wanted a fully functioning system and the contractor would not be granted unlimited time, he said. As for the pharmacists’ suggestion that patients in urgent need initially pay out-of-pocket and be refunded, it was a bit difficult to implement, Tsiakouris said.
“The system is set up to pay providers rather than beneficiaries and this makes it difficult,” he said, adding, however, that the matter would be assessed as a temporary stopgap. Pharmacies at any rate might make informal arrangements with regular patients, putting their med payment on a “tab” which they can return to pay later, once the system is back online, he said..
