Controlling expenditure
Ioannis Kyriopoulos, a health economics professor at the National School for Public Health, on the problem of supplies to national hospitals: «Today there is a climate of uncertainty concerning clinical decisions and the provision of healthcare that leads to an overuse of biomedical, genetic and pharmaceutical technology. Irregular and abusive practices thus develop. The response to this major problem, which in my opinion is the main cause for rising costs in health – given that salaries have been checked – is of course the creation of control mechanisms that can partially solve the problem. «It has been shown that administrative and control systems that are composite and complex produce the opposite results if not accompanied by structural changes in budgeting in the health sector. «As a result a top priority is the introduction of strict budgets that can describe with accuracy in figures the work produced by the hospital and health center, a practice that is common abroad. A double-entry logistics system is also required to reflect financial input and output with transparency. These measures are necessary in order to develop control mechanisms in supplies and form a basis on which to sort accounts according to the seriousness and type of illness.»
