The Minister of Health promised to improve health services for citizens during the presentation of the bill for the Innovation Fund.
Categorical assurance on reforming and enhancing the quality of public health care was provided by the Adonis Georgiadis, from the floor of the Parliament.
During his opening statement to the Social Affairs Committee, where the new bill to establish an Innovation Fund is being considered, the minister appeared completely optimistic about the future of health care in the country. Specifically, addressing the members of the committee, he emphatically asserted, “Have no doubt that we will deliver a better NHS than the one we received.”
The promoted draft law, which is titled “Establishment of an Innovation Fund – Patient Access to New drugs and treatments – Improvement of health services and other provisions”, aims to modernise pharmaceutical policy and to speed up the introduction of new treatments.
Georgiades underlined that the planned interventions will facilitate patients’ access to innovative medicines, while at the same time upgrading overall health services.
The minister said that with the bill and the establishment of the Innovation Fund, “we are creating a more sustainable, more transparent and faster environment for innovative medicines and treatments.” The Innovation Fund, said Georgiades, “we are creating it because we want to find a sustainable way in which we will include innovative medicines in the positive list in the coming years.”
This is necessary, “because the production of new therapies has increased numerically due to advances in technology – and it is excellent for humanity – but on the other hand it causes very big challenges for budgets, which are not increasing accordingly,” the minister explained.
“This imbalance creates great risks to the stability of the system. That is why there needs to be a model.” To this end, “we studied several similar models of foreign countries and ended up copying the models of Italy and Belgium“. There was a study by the university and Professor Souliotis that lasted a year. This was delivered last summer, was given to all stakeholders and became the bill.
About the financing of the fund, Georgiades clarified that “it is in addition to the pharmaceutical expenditure“. He said that the €50 million now earmarked for the fund is small, and will not stay at that level, as in the next three to four years, according to European estimates, it will reach €200 to 250 million. EUR, so that we can meet the needs for these innovative medicines and there are no shortages.
About the framework fund, Mr. Georgiades said that this is based on a simple idea: “Because the clawback for these drugs to get on the positive list is enormously high compared to that of generic drugs, companies don’t want to bring them in. We are offering them an alternative channel, that for a three-year period they will have a much lower clawback, but with monitoring of the patients taking the drug, to see if it brings them the promised result. If the monitoring committee finds that it does not benefit patients, then that drug will be taken off the list and subject to the high clawback without a rebate.”
What provisions are in the bill
The minister expressed confidence that this solution given “will work and will help patients to have relatively faster access to innovative treatments than,than they have today, where time delays are created because of the approvals that have to be given.”
Georgiades rejected opposition criticism that the draft law is sketchy. The government’s will to create an Innovation Fund, he said, had been announced by the prime minister in his speech at the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair in September, hence the criticisms about alleged “orders from the American ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, for the benefit of American companies” do not correspond to reality, since, as he explained, “Mrs. Gilfoil had not even come to Greece yet, so the argument has no value as it is based on time jumps that have no relation to the actual facts”. He pointed out that the efforts of the creation of the Innovation Fund had started from the beginning of his tenure in the ministry, and had made references to the Delphi 2025 event.
As for the other provisions of the bill, Mr. Georgiades said that many issues are included and regulated, such as the prohibition of industrial hemp flower from shops, as in the original law made under SYRIZA, its distribution and sale from shops was left in a grey area. In this way, the minister said, we want to close the possibility of selling from kiosks and tobacco shops a product that actually has a narcotic effect, because this is a matter of public health.
The minister acknowledged that we do indeed have provisions in the bill again relating to digitization of health care providers, noting that the major projects will be seen by citizens in the summer, with the completion and delivery of the relevant projects implemented by the Recovery Fund programs.
Maintenance of the projects for a number of years from delivery is provided for within the contracts. “Because we have now moved into a new era, my next effort will be to establish a framework for secondary data use, meaning we are getting ahead of the big European debate on the new relevant 2030 Regulation.”
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