Final decision on medicine protocol
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Daily News with wires
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Ocak 21, 2009 00:00
ISTANBUL - A dispute between a state authority and a pharmaceutical body that threatened to leave people uncovered by insurance to buy medicine has finally been resolved. The Social Security Institution, or SGK, and the Turkish Union of Pharmacists, or TEB, have agreed on a medicine purchasing protocol to cover everyone.
Erdoğan Çolak, the head of TEB, met with Health Minister Recep Akdağ and Labor Minister Faruk Çelik after the SGK declared that they would move to agree with pharmacists individually, if there could be no collective agreement with the state. The parties reached an agreement after long negotiations late into the night Monday.
"Eventually we reached an agreement. This protocol is signed," said Çelik, adding that they had never been in an attempt to exclude NGOs. Çolak on the other hand said there were developments on payments, daily treatments, and pharmacists’ employments. "We agreed that pharmacists should be regarded as the first level health service providers rather than being the supplier," Çolak said.
With the new protocol patients will not pay their shares for treatment in private hospitals to pharmacist but to the hospital itself. In the current system, the share patients must pay for treatment is collected by the pharmacists. In the new system, only public hospital shares will be collected at pharmacies.
"Eventually we reached an agreement. This protocol is signed," said Çelik, adding that they had never been in an attempt to exclude NGOs. Çolak on the other hand said there were developments on payments, daily treatments, and pharmacists’ employments. "We agreed that pharmacists should be regarded as the first level health service providers rather than being the supplier," Çolak said.
With the new protocol patients will not pay their shares for treatment in private hospitals to pharmacist but to the hospital itself. In the current system, the share patients must pay for treatment is collected by the pharmacists. In the new system, only public hospital shares will be collected at pharmacies.