To find out what’s gone wrong with the Greek economy, just look at the health-care system, according to a top medic at the country’s largest hospital.
“It’s the usual problems of Greece: bureaucracy, corruption and so on,” said Ioannis Datseris, director of nuclear medicine at Evangelismos Hospital in Athens and vice president of a group of doctors, medical schools and unions advising the government. “The hospitals and the health service are part of this political system.”
When Greece accepted its euro 110-billion ($145 billion) bailout package from the European Union and International Monetary Fund in May, one of the conditions was to reform a dysfunctional public health system, along with addressing losses at state-owned companies and spending on pensions. Hospitals and doctors ran up euro 5.4 billion of unpaid bills to suppliers between 2007 and 2009, figures from the government show.
The IMF reiterated last week that the country needs to overhaul accounting controls, install computers at hospitals to monitor spending, and centralise the system for buying drugs and equipment to negotiate lower prices. It also urged the use of electronic prescriptions to avoid misuse.
In 2007, Greece spent 2.4 per cent of gross domestic product on pharmaceuticals, the highest of all countries in the Paris- based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The group currently has 34 members.
“If we can make the management system better, we’re going to reduce costs for pharmaceuticals and public procurement,” Charalambos Economou, scientific director at the Andreas Papandreou Institute of Strategic and Development Studies in Athens, said yesterday. “We have to be successful. If we are not successful, the system is going to be corrupted.”
The Greek government aims to implement the measures next year and said they will save the equivalent of 0.5 per cent of GDP, according to a November 22 letter to the EU.
Also Read
Greece’s parliament approved the 2011 budget by a vote of 156 to 142. Measures include euro 14 billion of cost reductions, with euro 2.1 billion coming from hospital spending to lower a health bill that amounts to more than euro 13 billion, or about 5 per cent of GDP. The government said on December 8 it planned to issue more than euro 5 billion of non-interest paying bonds to hospital suppliers owed money from 2007 to 2009.
“At the end of 2012, the public health-care system will be effective, useful to citizens, accessible to all, adjusted and not wasteful,” Health Minister Andreas Loverdos told parliament on December 20 during a debate on next year’s budget.
Loverdos was unavailable to comment for this story because of his schedule, according to the Health Ministry. The 54-year-old was appointed to the post on September 7 by Prime Minister George Papandreou after implementing cuts to pension payments during his time as labour minister.
Datseris, also 54, said suppliers, doctors and hospital administrators have profited from a system that fails to control costs for supplies and drugs. “It’s a network of bureaucracy and corruption,” he said in a December 17 interview.
Many doctors supplement their income with payments from patients, known as “fakelaki”, Greek for small envelopes, containing cash for prompt services. Doctors and administrators also benefit from kickbacks from suppliers to buy their products rather than searching for the best price on the open market.
Robert John Dougall, the former vice president of market development at DePuy International, admitted in April to joining a £4.5-million ($7 million) scheme to pay Greek doctors and health officials through Medec SA, a Greek distributor of the company’s orthopedic products. DePuy is part of New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson, the world’s biggest maker of health-care products.
Dougall described the payments as the “cost of doing business in Greece,” according to documents from the England and Wales Court of Appeal.
Now 45, Dougall pleaded guilty to paying bribes to medical professionals working in the Greek public health-care system from February 2002 through December 2005, according to the court documents. He was sentenced in London to 12 months in prison, later suspended, according to the fraud office.
“Those responsible for procurement of medical supplies were provided with cash or other incentives to award the relevant contract to a particular supplier,” the court documents said. “The practice was endemic, DePuy was not the only company involved in this corruption.”
Some of the money was used to make “incentive payments” to persuade Greek surgeons to use DePuy’s products, according to the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office.