The director of the Canary Islands Health Service (SCS), Adasat Goya, held a meeting this Tuesday with the manager of the island's Health Services, Pablo Eguia, in which they discussed the implementation of the project through which the Doctor José Molina Orosa University Hospital will communicate interactively with its patients via SMS, starting today, to manage their appointments with the specialist.
The reminder management system is an interactive communication project via SMS, which redirects the user to a simple application that offers the patient the option to confirm, cancel, or request a date change for the appointment, if they are unable to attend.
The patient will receive the SMS ten days before the appointment and will have the possibility to confirm their attendance or not, as well as the need to reschedule it if they cannot attend. In this way, patients will receive a text message 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, cancellation, or change.
This application, created by the SCS, has the collaboration of the 012 Telephone Information and Assistance service, and offers the patient, for the first time, the possibility of interacting with the system in relation to hospital consultations, an option that did not exist until now.
Adasat Goya highlighted during the meeting that this application responds to the need to attend to patients with the least possible delay, and its objective is to improve the management of consultations and reduce waiting lists in this area.
"This new tool contributes to improving communication between hospitals and their users and allows for optimizing activity in consultations, given that appointments can be rescheduled and, in this way, prevent gaps from being left in the schedules due to no-shows," Goya specified.
Telephone Support
In the event of no response to the message, the appointment reminder manager will activate a telephone call protocol. An operator will attempt to contact the patient by telephone in order to maximize the chances of locating them and to record the patient's confirmation, cancellation, or request to change the appointment.
Similarly, if the patient does not use a mobile phone, they will receive a call on their landline for the same purpose.
With this project, the SCS takes another step towards improving patient care, optimizing resources, and reducing missed appointments, moving towards a more modern, agile, accessible, and efficient healthcare model.
Access to the service
Please remind users that, in order to have access to this SMS system, their health card information must be up to date.
Participation of 012
This project is carried out in collaboration with the 012 Telephone Information and Citizen Services of the Government of the Canary Islands, which will also offer information and advice on the new on-demand user service, and which has reinforced its staff with more than four hundred professionals.
Piloting
The piloting of this system began last May at the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria University Hospital, in Tenerife, and at the University Hospital of La Palma. Furthermore, it has also been launched in the Health Services of the Health Area of La Gomera and Fuerteventura, and in the Insular-Maternal and Child University Hospital Complex. It will gradually be extended to the rest of the hospitals in the Canary Islands to continue improving the management processes of appointments with specialist doctors and improving patient access to the planned medical assessment.
This application replaces any active solution previously developed by some centers that had begun to create similar systems. In this way, the SCS offers an equal tool for all centers and gives the same opportunity to patients regardless of the reference hospital they go to according to their health card.