NICOSIA – With a sixth group of private medical specialists refusing to take part in the new National Health scheme GESY, Cypriot, President Nicos Anastasiades said he would meet with them to talk about their objections.

That came after rheumatologists and intensivists said they wouldn’t participate, leading Anastasiades to schedule a meeting with officials of the CyMA medical association with the scheme still in setting-up stages.

The head of Parliament’s Health committee, Costas Constantinou, said, “It is with great concern that we are monitoring developments. It seems that everything is orchestrated and pre-decided by some within CyMA,” the Cyprus News Agency (CNA) reported.

He said that reforms aimed at benefiting patients, could be sabotaged by some in the name of “with cheap motives and other economic issues.”

“If our intervention is deemed necessary, we will ask to be briefed by the minister and formally call on some to assume their responsibilities,” he said. CyMA hasn’t said whether it would back GESY.

Constantinou told state broadcaster CyBC the state offered doctors what they were requesting but said they were going back on their word and that CyMA was hiding behind them without taking a position.

The head of CyMA, Petros Agathangelou told CNA that the agency would give its position only if it was called before the House health committee to discuss regulations concerning general physicians (GPs) under GESY, or outpatient care.

Ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctors of the private sector said earlier they won’t be part of GESY, following endocrinologists, paediatricians and gastroenterologists. Cardiologists haven’t said what they will do yet. GESY is set to begin June 1, 2020, with inpatient care at first.

Agathangelou said his group accepted an invitation to meet Anastasiades next week to give their position. He told Sigma TV that the Health Insurance Organisation should give final contracts to private doctors interested in joining GESY “so that the medical world can freely decide whether the system ensures quality and safety, but also the dignity of doctors who will be called to carry the weight of the system.”

Agathangelou dismissed claims that CyMA was behind the announcements of medical societies that they would not back GESY and said it was “slander,” while adding that, “Every interested party, has the right, in a public dialogue, to freely express their opinion.”