The Greek National Health System (NHS) includes 131 (general, special, university and university-affiliated) hospitals which admit more than 2.2 million patients per year. All NHS hospitals are geographically partitioned in seven administrative regional units. Each regional unit serves as the management link -at an intermediate level- between individual hospitals and the Ministry of Health. These hospitals constitute the backbone of the Greek NHS as they provide the bulk of secondary, tertiary as well as primary health care services to the majority of the population. Table 1 reports a summary of operational characteristics of Greek NHS hospitals. As it can be seen, there was a substantial increase in the demand for health care services from public hospitals as evidenced by the relevant increments in the total numbers of hospitalized cases (32.9%) and surgeries (9.2%) during the period 2009–2013. The increased demand for health care services in the public sector was due to a shift of patients from the private sector, mainly of lower income. In the 2009–2010 period, a decrease had been recorded in the total number of admissions in private hospitals by 25–30%, owed mainly to the inability of lower income groups to afford the relative high costs . In addition, increased demand for dental and obstetric services in public hospitals was also recorded, two areas that had been traditionally covered by private providers/hospitals up until then .