2024-04-22 11:37:08
The cancellation of the ministerial decision on the operation of the paid afternoon surgeries in the NHS hospitals is requested from the Council of State by the associations of hospital doctors, who have opposed the new institution from the beginning by organizing strike mobilizations and protest gatherings. Last Tuesday, and while it had been a month since the implementation of the afternoon surgeries, the Federation of Associations of Hospital Doctors of Greece, together with 30 Associations, submitted to the CoE a request to annul the joint ministerial decision, arguing that the authorizing provision on which the decision is based is unconstitutional.
In particular, as stated in the application, the provision conflicts with articles 21 paragraph 3, 2 paragraph 1, 4 paragraph 1 and 2 of the Constitution, as well as with law 4498/2017 on the working time of doctors. The applicants stress that the constitutional imperative of Article 21 paragraph 3, according to which the state takes care of citizens’ health, “cannot be related, much less be carried out with the financial transaction of patients with doctors and with the NHS hospital” , as shown by the operation of the paid afternoon surgeries. Invoking the second paragraph of Article 2 of the Constitution which states that respect and protection of human dignity are a primary obligation of the state, they point out that “ESY hospitals and their doctors are not authorized to treat patients according to their financial strength” , while in another part of the text of the application they state that “the purpose of compulsory insurance is negated, since the payment of contributions is not enough for every citizen and doctor to have health services in an equal way from an NHS hospital”. The representatives of the doctors also argue that the decision “introduces an impermissible deviation from the constitutional order (Article 4 of the Constitution which states that Greeks are equal before the law and have equal rights and obligations), since the provision of health care by NHS hospitals is differentiated from whether or not the citizens in need of the health service can afford it”.
Total working time
At the same time, the doctors emphasize that the ministerial decision on the operation of the afternoon surgeries violates the legislative regulation of the total working time of the NHS doctors (law 4498/2017), which was imposed to protect their health first and foremost as well as that of the hospitalized patients.
They argue that the decision does not have the necessary legal reasoning. As they note, “its release was allegedly imposed by the fact of the long waiting time for patients to be operated on. Dealing with this situation requires the search for its causes and the assessment of whether the proposed KYA solves the problem”.
As they argue, the reasons for the long waiting time are the vacant organic positions of doctors, nurses and technologists, the closed operating theaters due to lack of staff, the closed ICUs, the low wages that caused the hospitals to be deprived of staff. “None of the causes are eliminated with the CCA,” they point out.
Source kathimerini.gr