Before Easter, the Health Insurance Organization (HIO) will proceed with the implementation of a regulation that will allow informing the beneficiaries of the General Health System (GHS) via text messages on their mobile phones (alongside emails) about all healthcare provider entries made in their name in the GHS software.
Details regarding the actions that beneficiaries of the system will be required to take to receive these text messages on their mobile phones will be announced very soon.
This is because the new procedures will also cater to the elderly and generally to individuals who do not have internet access and cannot receive updates via email.
The organisation’s current priority is to link the beneficiaries of the GHS with their electronic profiles in the system’s software.
According to a survey conducted by the HIO, almost five years after the system’s implementation, access to their electronic folders has been granted to 260,000 adult beneficiaries who activated their profiles through the specified procedures since the start of the GHS in 2019.
Through these beneficiaries, approximately 100,000 other beneficiaries are also connected to the system.
These are children registered under their parents’ names.
Therefore, the total number of beneficiaries (adults and children) who have access to their accounts is less than 400,000, while the number of GHS beneficiaries is approaching one million.
The same investigation into the GHS software also revealed that a significant number of mobile phones registered under beneficiaries’ names are either deactivated or do not belong to them (but likely to the person who registered them in the GHS in 2019).
Furthermore, in some cases, multiple mobile phone numbers are registered under one beneficiary of the system.
Similar phenomena are observed with email addresses registered under beneficiaries’ names, prompting the HIO to urge citizens to update their data due to the current disorder in the system, which is considered justified since various facilitations were provided to citizens in April 2019 to register in the GHS without significant inconvenience.
To proceed with the implementation of the new regulation, Marios Tziakouris, the Director of Information Technology of the organisation, stated to Phileleftheros that “the correct data of the GHS beneficiaries must be available. For this to happen, citizens must first activate their profile in the software (the process is posted on the GHS website) and then check if the registered mobile phone number and email address belong to them.”
This is necessary because, initially, HIO will start sending text messages to beneficiaries who have an active profile in the GHS software and for whom the organisation has the correct data.
If the profile is not activated, the beneficiary cannot access it to check if the correct mobile phone number and email address are registered.
The activation process for the beneficiary profile is posted on the GHS website, and “for the elderly who do not use the internet or other individuals who do not have access to or know how to use it, a specific process has also been defined which they must follow to start receiving updates about them entered into the system.”
Specifically, the elderly or individuals without internet access will have the option to receive text messages on their mobile phones if they activate the relevant setting through their personal doctor.
“Details about this process will be announced soon, and citizens should wait for the activation date of the new regulation to be announced before contacting their personal doctor.”
In conclusion, Tziakouris emphasised that “informing the GHS beneficiaries via email will continue in parallel.” However, he pointed out that “activating the profile of the beneficiaries in the system is very important for them as well because this way they secure direct access to all their data, such as prescriptions for medication, referrals issued to them, etc.”
