title: Global Budget for Cyprus' National Health System: The Promised Land or a No Man's Land?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Soaring health expenditures worldwide call for potent cost-containment approaches. Global budgets have been used by several countries to harness their health expenditures by constraining the total payable amount to a predefined budget threshold.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Cyprus is vacillating on the use of a global budget for its National Health System; nevertheless, its attributes must be scrutinized to rule out potential adverse effects on quality of care and access of patients. The delegation of budget across providers is a context-sensitive process and as such it must be based on historical data and performance incentives as well.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A global budget is not a panacea, and consequently the enhancement of health system's performance, appropriateness assessment, and volume and capacity control measures are incumbent. A global budget demonstrates a higher complexity factor for pharmaceuticals, which mandates a thorough assessment of pharmaceuticals before their reimbursement and elaboration of measures to safeguard timely access to innovation.
authors.affiliation: Health Insurance Organization, Nicosia, Cyprus. Electronic address: panayiotis.petrou@st.ouc.ac.cy.
authors.forename: Panagiotis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Petrou
mesh_terms: D002017:Budgets; D003363:Cost Control; D003535:Cyprus; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D014943:Global Health; D018166:Health Care Reform; D005102:Health Expenditures; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D008483:Medical Assistance; D009313:National Health Programs / Q000191:economics*
keywords: Cyprus; efficiency; global budget; health expenditure; health reforms; health system; pharmaceuticals; point value