Personal doctor: more than half of citizens have not yet registered

An innovation in the Greek health care system known as the “Personal Doctor” does not seem to be widely accepted by the Greeks.

Despite the highly publicized and promising program, as of November 8, 2022, a total of 4,539,704 civilians and 3,333 doctors have registered for it. The proportion of registered beneficiaries-citizens of all beneficiaries is 51.2%, and unregistered – 48.8%. 6 out of 10 citizens under 49 have not yet registered. Almost every second citizen over the age of 17 is not registered with a personal doctor, and among citizens under 49 only 4 out of 10 are registered. The authorities are trying to attract doctors to cover all citizens of the country.

However, private professionals are currently not particularly interested in joining the program, caring for more rights and freedoms that they have without cooperation with the EOPYY public health system. Characteristically, out of 3333 doctors who joined the program “Personal Doctor”only 1083 are private freelancers and 2251 are physicians already working in the public primary health care system.

The e-platform prosopikos.gov.gr has 1,694,205 vacancies for registration, although the actual availability of specialists varies greatly. For example, in Attica, where there is the biggest problem with the availability of doctors (and joining them through the program), there are almost no places to register. According to the Ministry of Health, at least 500 additional doctors are needed to provide public health and primary care services to the 1 million people in the region.

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