Published a few days ago, the decree suggests that anyone between ages of 18 and 65 visiting a health clinic starting next July would have to be offered a test about alcohol risks. If the patient agrees, a test will be filled out to demonstrate the level of alcohol consumption: low-risk, risky, harmful and suspected alcohol addiction.
If a person is diagnosed with risky, harmful or suspected addiction, he would have to repeat the test every year, while those found in the risky category would have to be tested every two years.
“I have to fill out piles of tables for the Patients’ Fund, a pile of table for the (social insurer) Sodra behind my decision to give a person a sick leave, and here comes another table. The idea in itself is good, the bad part is that all the tables and the paperwork are unnecessary bureaucracy. I fear that the good idea may be drowned in the unnecessary bureaucracy,” said family physician Valerijus Morozovas, one of the initiators of the Lithuanian Movement of Doctors.