Mitsotakis: "Ambulance" will arrive in 7-10 minutes

Health sector reforms will be the focus of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ speeches at the Thessaloniki International Fair this coming weekend, 9-10 September.

The main directions of reforms to strengthen the NHS (ΕΣΥ), which Mr. Mitsotakis will announce, are the reorganization of emergency medical services and emergency departments (EDS) in public hospitals – two critical areas for providing care to citizens.

The change in hospital management model announced by Minister of Health Michael Chrysochoidis and to be implemented in September will also play an important role. According to sources in the Ministry of Health, the new criteria and selection process for the administrations of hospitals and health regions will be objective and meritocratic.

With regard to the reorganization of the ambulance service, the main goal is to reduce the time required for the arrival of a car with a brigade on a call in urban areas to 7-10 minutes from the 15-25 minutes currently required, which leads to loss of precious time, which can be fatal for the patient.

Major changes are beginning to take place in the field of Emergency Medical Services (ED). At the first stage, infrastructure changes will be carried out related to the creation of autonomous intensive care units, and a new model of duty will be launched in the hospitals of Attica.

Previously, the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis was subjected to derogatory criticism after numerous cases deaths of people who did not wait for an ambulance. Stories, including those with foreign tourists, received an international response and put Greece in a negative light. Even then it was indicated that the National Health Service needed at least 200 hundred ambulances, and at least three times as many medical staff and drivers to complete the crews.

Maintaining its key role in the provision of emergency medical care at the prehospital stage, ΕΚΑΒ is being radically restructured at all levels – organizational, operational, digital, educational. The goal of the center, its management and staff remains the same: to provide more efficient and faster emergency care. The basis of all changes is the time of arrival of ambulances to the scene. The goal is to reduce the time of approach to the scene of an accident to 7-10 minutes in cities. According to representatives ΕΚΑΒ, this is quite an achievable goal for very emergency cases such as severe injuries in a car accident, heart attack, drowning, etc. In cases that are classified as urgent but do not pose a threat to the life of patients, such as orthopedic cases, the ambulance arrival time is estimated to be reduced by about 10 minutes, to a total of 35 minutes.

After repeated tragic ambulance incidents in May last year, ΕΚΑΒ already on the road to recovery. The recruitment of 111 support brigades has already been completed (although ΕΚΑΒ announced 250 but no response), 800 permanent positions will also be announced. It should be noted that the support staff positions that were not filled in Attica will be transferred to the ambulance sectors of this region, which will be announced shortly.

The next step will be administrative and organizational reorganization ΕΚΑΒ. Instead of an unsystematic organization created in accordance with the needs of the population two or three decades ago, EKAB will now consist of 13 branches, fully corresponding to the administrative regions of the country. Within each of them, the organizational structure will follow the model of regional divisions. The fleet of vehicles of each branch will be unified, i.е. it will include all ambulances of health structures. This means that all the ambulances and ambulances of the Health Centers will be integrated into ΕΚΑΒ. Until now, ambulances from polyclinics and hospitals were attached to these structures and worked under their own control, which, as practice shows, led to numerous failures – ultimately to the detriment of citizens.

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