The Primary Care Management of the Lanzarote Health Area is preparing organizational changes for patient care in the different health centers and local clinics on the island in preparation for the de-escalation phases after the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.
Following the organizational management protocol for healthcare activity prepared by the General Directorate of Healthcare Programs of the Canary Islands Health Service, the Primary Care Management of Lanzarote adapts its operation with the aim of providing patients with the greatest safety in the context of recovery after the coronavirus crisis.
The protocol that governs the gradual return to healthcare activity of the island's Primary Care centers in the current phase 1, states that when assistance to the centers is necessary, patients should go, as a general rule, with a prior telephone appointment. Likewise, the request for issuance or renewal of the Treatment Plan will continue to be managed preferably through telephone consultation, leaving the need to go to the health center at the discretion of the physician.
For the medical head of Primary Care, Aniuska Sutil, "services can be resumed according to the conditions of each center, and always taking extreme hygiene measures. Our duty is to inform the patient first in the telephone care and from that first contact the healthcare professional will give them an in-person appointment, ensuring the environment in which they must move within the health center, protecting the patient from unnecessary risks".
For her part, the Director of Nursing, Victoria Estévez, also recommends to patients that even if the possibility of requesting an in-person appointment is given, they should opt for the telephone one "to establish the conditions of how and when to carry out the consultations, optimizing the healthcare environment in which patients move, who will come to the center later because they have not been able to resolve their consultation by telephone".
The health centers and local clinics of Lanzarote will maintain the screening or triage table in the coming weeks to ensure that only those patients who have been summoned access the facilities, preventing people who put other patients and healthcare personnel at risk from entering.
In this way, it is about recovering the activity of scheduled consultations and follow-up of the different health programs. From the Primary Care Management, there is awareness that this gradual return to patient care must guarantee safety in healthcare spaces, so training in safety and prevention measures is being promoted. In addition, those patients at higher risk and chronic patients have been identified by level of fragility in lists accessible from the medical record.
For their part, the Emergency Services and Continuous Care Points will maintain differentiated and separate areas for patients with respiratory symptoms, possible or probable COVID-19 so that they are not in contact with other patients.?
