Migrants are being shifted to low-density family medicine clinics

Source: News Center

Unity and Solidarity Union Branch 1 President Dr. Ahmet Mehlepçi, who stated that foreign patients in Istanbul were being transferred to other family physicians' clinics without their knowledge, said that this transfer, which took place after the 25th of the month, strained the monthly performance targets of doctors and midwives and caused high deductions from their salaries.

At the end of April in Istanbul, immigrant , foreign national, and mostly Syrian origin patients with ID numbers starting with 99 in family medicine units with high patient numbers were shifted to family medicine units with lower population density without their knowledge.

The Ministry did not provide any information to family physicians and family health midwife nurses regarding the procedure in question.

This shifting process, which took place even though the directorate or the ministry should not assign patients after the 25th of the month under normal circumstances, caused the workload of family physicians to increase suddenly and their monthly performance to receive their entitlements to be negatively affected.

Reacting to this situation, Dr. Mehlepçi drew attention to the fact that this process, which was carried out from a desk and was the product of complete incompetence, victimized both parties. Dr. Ahmet Mehlepçi continued his words as follows:

“We work with a system called negative performance in the family health center, which we actually do not accept and which is imposed on us. We have to do the vaccinations of our babies and children, the follow-ups of our patients and the follow-ups of our pregnant women on time until the end of the month. When we do not do it on time, we are subject to very large deductions from our earnings. Now, think about it, a family physician friend of ours adds 566 patients to his population on the 28th of the month, you have to check whether the vaccination and follow-up information of these patients is up to date or not until the 30th of the month and complete the missing vaccinations and follow-ups. Even if you are a superhuman being, it is impossible to complete such a thing with so many patient assignments in the last two days of the month. This is just one example, hundreds of our family physician friends had hundreds of patient changes…”