1566 health hotline overwhelmed on first day of expanded service

Greece’s escaped wellness hotline, 1566, was overwhelmed connected Thursday pursuing the enlargement of its services to let citizens to publication appointments with doctors astatine nationalist hospitals, officials said.

The hotline received a grounds 162,420 calls connected Thursday, according to Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis. The system had been designed to grip 10,000 calls per day. Prior to the expansion, the service, which launched connected July 15, allowed appointments with doctors under the state-run wellness insurer EOPYY, arsenic well arsenic scheduling for superior attraction services, diagnostic tests, and accusation connected on-call hospitals and pharmacies.

Between July 15 and September 30, the hotline handled much than 164,000 calls – slightly much than the volume received connected Thursday alone. The mean regular telephone volume until Wednesday was 2,017, meaning Thursday’s traffic represented a 7,609% summation implicit the regular mean and 1,524% implicit the system’s designed capacity.

The surge near galore callers waiting for hours oregon unable to get through. Of the 162,420 calls, 35,500 were successfully handled, while implicit 50,000 infirmary appointments for October were scheduled done 1566, the FindDoctors.gov.gr portal, and the MyHealth app.

Georgiadis said the volume of incoming calls demonstrated the initiative’s unprecedented nationalist acceptance. Speaking connected Skai radio, helium apologized to those inconvenienced and said the system would stabilize successful the coming days. He besides noted that a call-back diagnostic had been added to assistance negociate the demand.