The Health Insurance Organization has made changes to the GHS’s IT system, and as of today, the “telephone consultation” is integrated into the software, which doctors will be able to record in cases where they serve their patients via telephone for specific issues.
According to the information electronically received yesterday by personal physicians, “telephone service will only apply in cases where there is no physical visit by the beneficiary to the doctor’s office and when telephone communication occurs between the beneficiary and the personal physician resulting in the following specific actions:
- Prescription for medications
- Issuance of referrals for diagnostic and laboratory tests
- Issuance of referrals for services from other healthcare professionals.
- Telephone consultation is not provided for the purpose of issuing referrals to specialist doctors.
“It is noted that for the telephone notification of the beneficiary regarding the results of laboratory or other diagnostic tests, the personal physician does not need to create a new visit for previewing the results. The results are available through the relevant notification in the incoming messages as well as in the medical history of the beneficiary to which the personal physician has access.”
During the initial months of implementing the “telephone service,” it “will focus on visits considered for the calculation of performance indicators for issuing referrals by personal physicians but will not be counted in visits per age group per calendar year of the beneficiaries.”
Beneficiaries “will continue to receive notifications via email whenever a visit is recorded in the IT system by their personal physician. This notification will now also indicate the type of visit recorded, as well as the fact that both telephone service and visits outside regular hours will not count towards visits per calendar year of the beneficiaries.”
With this development, a problem that has been causing unrest among GHS beneficiaries for almost a year is corrected, leading in many cases to unnecessary tensions between personal physicians and patients.
