The Health Ministry recently revealed that a doctor was fined 800,000 euros for prescribing thousands of medications over the course of a month using his mother’s Social Security number. Just before a press conference on measures to tackle over-prescribing, Adonis Georgiades discussed efforts to reduce rising pharmaceutical costs through existing and new systems developed by EDIKA.

He said, “We have identified over 100 different doctors with over-prescribing.”

Georgiades explained that “we are conducting audits through EDIKA and EOPYY, we have already sent apology notes and have sent the cases to the financial prosecutor because there will be criminal sanctions.”

In this context, the Minister of Health announced that “the audit will be done retroactively and backward” adding that “according to estimates, there are at least 50 million euros more drugs that are written every year to EOPYY without having to be written.”