Our View: Akel’s approach threatens ruin of public hospitals

The general secretary of Akel Stefanos Stefanou fired a broadside against the government on Wednesday for the situation at public hospitals, claiming that these were on the brink of collapse and his party was at pains to prevent this from happening. Stefanou asked the president and the health minister how they viewed the work of the state health services, Okypy, which runs the public hospitals, and what they planned to do to solve the problems.

His reasoning was that since the government appointed the board of Okypy to implement its policies, it was ultimately responsible for what was going wrong. It should now “answer if it agrees with the accounting approach to the administering of public hospitals, which are gradually changing their character.” He pointed out that while investment funds were entering public health, “public hospitals remain without structure, without adequate staffing, with the result of being gradually driven to decline.”

Then Akel wonders why voters do not trust it to run the economy. What Stefanou is advocating is that the state should pour more money into public hospitals, which are economically unviable. The use of accounting principles in the hospitals’ administration, by which Okypy has been trying to make them viable – reduce losses to be precise – is considered the wrong approach by Akel which seems to think that state funds are limitless and that the taxpayer should keep pouring money into the public hospitals which are a bottomless pit. This is communist economics which inevitably lead to bankruptcy.

Public hospitals will decline and wither not because of Okypy’s accounting approach but because greedy and entitled hospital workers have been sucking them dry. The average annual salary for hospital doctors is €150,000 but their union was demanding more money and threatened strikes earlier this month. Not a single politician said anything when the Anastasiades government irresponsibly told Okypy to give these pay rises a few years ago. Should we also mention the restrictive practices imposed by unions over the years – from shift requirements to ludicrous working hours – that make hospitals economically inefficient and uncompetitive? Why do public hospitals employ three nurses per bed compared to private hospitals’ one per bed?

Yet unions are protesting about understaffing. The answer is to hire even more nurses at starting salaries that are about 50 per cent higher than those of private hospitals and pay doctors even more money. Only a communist refuses to see that this financial recklessness will lead to the eventual collapse of public hospitals and their taking over by private companies. If this is really what they want, they should carry on attacking Okypy and backing the irresponsible unions of the hospital workers.

According to the Gesy law, public hospitals should have become financially self-sufficient this year, requiring no more financial support from the state. The government has extended the period of support for another two years, after which it will either have to extend it again or close down the hospitals. Ironically, Okypy, which sees the huge financial problems and is trying to do something, is being criticised for using an accounting approach to deal with them. Is there any other approach that, according to Akel, would prevent the financial collapse of public hospitals?