Constant swap of hospital directors
Three in four hospitals in Attica have changed directors since 2004 and the average spell of time that an official is in charge is less than two years, according to research carried out by Sunday’s Kathimerini. The frequency of change at the helm of more than 100 hospitals in and around Athens suggests that the lack of continuity could be harming the government’s efforts to whip Attica’s health system into shape. At Evangelismos, one of the capital’s biggest hospitals, there have been four different directors over the last six years. The law was changed in 2005 to give directors only a two-year contract. Before that, they were given five-year deals. Some officials feel that this change has not helped the health system. «I think that directors should be in charge for four to five years,» said the director of KAT hospital, Theodoros Tollis. «This period of time is enough to display some progress and assess any director’s work.» There are also fears that the regular changes at hospitals are deterring good candidates from the sector. «Why would anyone with experience in administration give up their job and choose the health system with its outdated wages and the insecurity that one day he will not be to the tastes of the Health Ministry at the time,» Andreas Kartapanis, a former director of the Sismanogleio and Evangelismos hospitals told Kathimerini.
