Begona Fernandez |
Madrid (EFE).- Primary Care does not go back. Health centers face the summer with practically no professionals to cover the vacations of family doctors, which results in more delays in consultations, more delays in diagnosis and almost double the ratio of patients per doctor, with an ordinary average of 40 -50 per day.
In an interview with EFE, the president of the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians (SEMG), Antonio Fernández-Pro, explains that this increase in care pressure on vacation, concentrated in the months of July and August, is the “storm perfect” for the increase in attacks on health personnel, “increasingly frequent” and the result of the discomfort of patients with the health system.
Fernández-Pro, who inaugurates this Wednesday the XXIX national congress of the SEMG, which brings together in Granada until June 17 more than 2,262 family doctors and 936 in online format, affirms that no matter how much professionalism and will that the doctor has ” trying to extend the holidays to June and September so that the impact is less”, in the end it is impossible and the system “collapses”.
According to the latest health barometer published by the Center for Sociological Research, 26.4% of people who went to make an appointment with a family doctor waited eleven days or more to be seen and the delay for a specialist is more than three months to 39% of the patients and from 30 to 90 days for 41.7%.
“We are facing a summer in the same situation or worse than last year because the problems are the same and aggravated,” says the president of the SEMG who sees the difficulty of reversing this trend with general elections involved.
Fernández-Pro points to the political parties and the regional governments that, ultimately, are ultimately responsible for health care with the support of the Ministry and urges them to materialize this pact for health in favor of Primary Care, “and if not, they should say so, so that everyone is clear about what they vote for”.
Health centers in small towns are the most affected
The president of the SEMG acknowledges that it is very difficult to specify the percentage of consultations that will close this summer because it depends “individually on each center.”
However, he admits that an urban health center in Madrid, Bilbao, Seville or Valencia is not the same as those located in small towns with 4-6 family doctors. In this circumstance, the lack of substitutes when taking vacations significantly increases the number of patients that sometimes exceed one hundred per doctor.
Although when that happens, he explains, all the filters are activated and the waiting lists are automatically started “and instead of seeing the GP immediately, four or five days pass.
Another problem is the lack of replacement since, in no case, he says, the professionals who leave the MIR absorb those who are retiring.
Prestige family medicine from the university
One of the weaknesses of Primary Care is that Family Medicine is an undervalued specialty, which year after year leaves vacancies in the call for MIR positions.
Fernández-Pro maintains that in this matter many things can be done because “no one chooses what they do not know and if the medical student tiptoes through Primary Care because they are immersed in the hospital, they will feel alien to the specialty”.
For the president of the SEMG, the first point would be to “give value to Family Medicine at the University” and then offer attractive work scenarios, facilitating work-life balance and incentives for positions that are difficult to cover.
“And it is illogical -he points out- that if the National Health System is public and the political trend contemplates strengthening Primary Care, the university does not follow that line so that students leave well-trained in a discipline that may be the future for many of they”.