Family physicians considering staging new protests over problems with e-health system

RIGA - Family physicians are running out of patience over the continuing glitches in the e-health system, and some of them have been urging the Latvian Family Physicians' Association to organize a protest, the association's president Sarmite Veide told LETA.

She added that staging a protest could be considered during the Family Physicians Association's general meeting on June 8.

Family physicians have been using the e-health system to issue electronic sickness leaves and prescriptions since the beginning of the year. Although four months have passed since using the system became mandatory, various glitches in the system have not been fixed yet, and the system continues to be very slow, stressed Veide.

On Wednesday, the e-health system was down for about three hours, said Veide. Although the National Health System said Wednesday afternoon that it had fixed everything, the system was still working much slower than usual, said Veide.

Members of the association regularly complain that the e-health system is "impossible to use" as the newer versions of the system fill up cache memory on their computers and they have to log in to the system multiple times every day.

This past March, the association informed the Health Ministry, the Cabinet of Ministers and Saeima groups that family physicians had to work longer hours due to the slowness and shortcomings of the e-health system, and that the system was actually impeding family physicians' work.

According to Veide, the Health Ministry sent a formal reply, judging from which the ministry is not planning to hire independent experts who would determine the reasons for the system's shortcomings and offer ways to make the system work better. "Family physicians are not seeing any improvements in the system and are running out of patience," emphasized Veide.