FROM Monday, complaint boxes will be positioned at all state general hospitals across the island, and hospital managers will be required to allocate two hours a week to meet the public, Health Minister Charis Charalambous said yesterday.
The decision was announced to journalists at a news conference on the effectiveness and activities of the state lab, as part of a campaign to inform the public about each of the ministry’s departments.
“All hospital general managers will have to spend two hours a week to meet the public and listen to their pressures and demands first hand,” he said.
“There will also be complaints boxes and we urge the public to use them.”
Charalambous said the move was part of new regulations to make the hospitals more self
sufficient and to solve their own problems.
“As of Monday, we are turning a new page with how we communicate with people and how we solve problems… We are expecting major changes in how we deal with citizens, for the better.”
Referring to the long queues at the new Nicosia general hospital, the health minister said it had been looked into and signs would be posted on Tuesday informing people how long they should expect to wait.
“Our aim is that people should not have to wait any more than 40 minutes. We think that is a reasonable time and people cannot expect to come to the hospital, wait five minutes and be served straightaway,” he said.
Charalambous also said another problem was that people turned up for their appointments hours earlier than they were supposed to.
“Now that doctors’ visits are by appointment there is no need to go to the hospital from 7am when their appointment is at 12 noon.”
He pointed out that on Thursday health ministry staff were sent to the hospital to monitor the flow of patients to and from the hospital, only to find that between 7am and 8am, 44 patients showed up and between 11am and 12 noon only 12 patients arrived.
“Why was there a need for so many patients to come so early and before their appointments?”
Regarding complaints that the main hospital line often rang unanswered, Charalambous said a new telephone operator would be employed next week.
“At the moment, we only have one telephone operator and we’re getting another one. If there is a need for a third telephone operator we’ll get one… We are also going to make it that when the phone is engaged it rings engaged. At the moment it rings on and people think the operator is not doing his job and don’t realise he’s already on the line.”
Charalambous added that the ministry’s aim was to ensure that the hospital’s administrative staff were productive and carried out their duties.
“If people want to be served straight away at the reception desks we’d need to hire 22 people, not just have the seven we have. As for the telephone operators, we want to ensure the two we will have from next week are productive before we talk about needing to hire more people. You can’t just keep adding staff, you need to make sure the staff you already have are productive.”
