The President of the Canary Islands Government, Fernando Clavijo, and the Minister of Health of the regional Executive, Esther Monzón, presented this Tuesday, May 13, at a press conference in Santa Cruz de Tenerife the details of the Hospital Care Appointment Reminder Manager, a pilot project through which the public hospitals of the Canary Islands will communicate interactively with their patients via SMS to manage their appointments with the specialist doctor.
Fernando Clavijo explained that the Reminder Manager is an interactive communication system via SMS, which redirects the user to a simple application that offers the patient the option to confirm, cancel or request a change of date of the appointment, in case of not being able to attend.
The patient will receive the SMS with days in advance to the appointment and will have the possibility to choose in the case that they can or cannot attend it.
The president added that the application created by the SCS has the collaboration of the Information and Telephone Assistance service 012, and offers for the first time to the patient the possibility of interacting with the system in relation to hospital consultations, an option that did not exist until now.
During the presentation, Fernando Clavijo stressed that "this new service will contribute to improving the communication of hospitals with their users and allows optimizing the activity in consultations, since canceled appointments can be rescheduled and, in this way, avoid gaps in the agendas without being covered due to absences."
The president congratulated the SCS Management for the progress made in such a short time to create the Unified Clinical History Viewer, the update of the miSCS app for SCS users and now the hospital appointment reminder manager.
Piloting
The Minister Esther Monzón added that "this project, which has begun to be piloted at the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria University Hospital, in Tenerife, and at the La Palma University Hospital, will be gradually extended to the rest of the hospitals in the Canary Islands to continue improving the management processes of appointments in consultations with specialist doctors and improving the patient's accessibility to the planned medical assessment."
In this way, patients will receive an SMS with a personalized link that will allow them to access the specific details of their appointment, including place, service and time and the options for confirmation, change and cancellation.
The Minister said that this project responds to the need to attend to the patient with the minimum possible delay and that it was born with the objective of improving the management of consultations and reducing waiting lists in this area, as announced in February, among the measures that could be carried out to reduce the delay of consultations in the hospital setting.
This application replaces any active solution previously developed by some centers that had begun to create similar systems, although more limited in capacity. In this way, the Canary Islands Health Service offers an equal tool for all centers and gives the same opportunity to patients regardless of the reference hospital they attend according to their health card.
Telephone support
In case of not receiving a response to the message, the appointment reminder manager will activate a telephone call protocol. An operator will try to contact the patient by telephone call with the objective of maximizing the possibilities of location and register the confirmation, cancellation or request to change the appointment by the patient.
Likewise, if the patient does not use mobile telephony, they will receive a call to their landline with the same purpose.
With this project, the Canary Islands Health Service takes a further step towards improving patient care, optimizing resources and reducing absences in consultation, moving towards a more modern, agile, accessible and efficient health model.
How to access the service
Users of the Canary Islands Health Service who have not yet communicated their mobile phone number to their reference hospital center can go to the Admission services of their hospital to update their contact information, as well as that of their family members who are in their care.
In this way, as explained by the president and the minister, patients will be able to have access to the change of appointment if necessary once they receive the corresponding SMS.
Participation of the O12
This project is carried out in collaboration with the Information and Telephone Assistance service 012 of the Government of the Canary Islands, which will also offer information and advice on the new service at the user's request, which has reinforced its staff with more than four hundred professionals.
Consultations in health centers
The Minister recalled that patients already have the option of modifying their appointment for consultations with doctors and nurses at the health center both by telephone call to 012 and through the miSCS app easily and quickly, so it was necessary to create an application that would give the patient that possibility also in hospital care.
