Date Published: 13/04/2021
ARCHIVED - Complaints about waiting times to see a doctor at medical centres in the province of Alicante
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
Despite all medical staff being vaccinated and the low number of cases in the province, health centres are still functioning as they were mid-pandemic
Health centres in the province of Alicante, which have been providing telephone consultations since before the third wave of the pandemic hit, are still employing mainly telephonic services, despite the fact that Covid cases in the region of Valencia are the lowest in Spain, and as a result it is being reported that in some cases it has taken up to 17 days to get a telephone appointment with a GP.
With only 30% of appointments being carried out in-person, telephone calls are still the main means of communication with doctors in the province, with most health centres still operating as they were in the middle of the pandemic, when the cases were much higher and very few medical staff had been vaccinated.
Many health centres have reported accessibility problems with their switchboards due to the high number of phone calls. Some centres have reinforced their switchboards or have even contracted call centres, but many patients are still reporting difficulties contacting their local health centres.
It is common to see frustrated comments on social media from members of the public unable to obtain an appointment to see a doctor or even to speak to someone at their local health centre.
Representatives from the Valencian Family and Community Medicine Society have stated that they are waiting for the regional ministry of Health to put better organizational measures in place in health centres.
Staff from these centres say don’t want to go back to the pre-pandemic system, as telephone consultations have proven to be useful, especially in bureaucratic tasks as frequently there is no need to actually see a doctor when it is simply a case that a patient requires a repeat prescription or has a query about the treatment procedure.
In addition, many GP’s have expressed their unwillingness to go back to the old system, in which they were expected to see a patient every 5 minutes, a situation which is not only highly stressful, but also limits their capacity to understand the needs of the patients and give proper attention to those who really need it.
As a result, representatives of health centre personnel are requesting that moving forward, 30% of appointments be telephonic and the remaining 70% be in-person, which would permit more thorough face-to-face consultations and minimise wasted time.
Another suggestion from the Society is that all necessary medical tests be requested and carried out before the patient comes to an appointment, so that the patient can receive the results and be examined during the consultation.
The Ministry of Health in the region of Valencia is currently working on further improvements for their mobile app GVA + Salud with the objective of establishing a sorting process which will act as a guide for doctors and provide information on each patient’s reason for consultation.
This app can be downloaded free.