Thanks to LANCELOT DIGITAL – 200 million to reduce waiting lists in the Canary Islands
The Minister of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands, Blas Trujillo, and the director of the Canary Health Service, Conrado Domínguez, presented today, Wednesday February 17, the Plan Tackles 2021/22 with which a reduction of the list of wait 30% and delay less than 90 days. This plan has a financial statement of 200 million euros and will last two years to be stable and dynamic in obtaining results.
Both the Minister of Health and the director of the SCS insisted on the need to implement a program lasting two years of rapid intervention on the waiting list that allows progress in both diagnosis and surgical activity and complementary tests to reduce the waiting lists and solve health problems with greater agility, especially in the specialties that accumulate more waiting lists and delays.
As he explained, “the objective is to optimize resources to enhance the surgical activity as well as that of consultations and diagnostic tests with which a 30 percent reduction in waiting lists is intended and that the average delay does not exceed 90 days Although, he clarified that the delay of the oncological pathology continues to be a priority that should not exceed 30 days of delay.
To execute the Plan Aborda, Conrado Domínguez detailed the following measures to improve resources, management and planning in the next two years:
– A Unique District will be created for patients from the same Health Area or with respect to those of reference from the non-capital islands, so that a patient can be resolved in any hospital on their island or in the reference hospital if the one that corresponds to it presents longer delay.
– Special plans will be put in place to expand hospital activity in the afternoon and / or on weekends for surgical interventions, consultations and diagnostic tests, through ordinary activities and special programs.
– Selective prioritization. The activity with the longest delay will be prioritized, both surgical and consultations and tests so that those with the longest delay are answered through special plans and ordinary working hours. Prioritization based on other socioeconomic factors will also be studied, taking into account the criteria agreed with the patient associations.
– The CMA24 programs for Major Ambulatory Surgery, the Delay Plan for more complex specialties and the Summer Plan will be promoted so that activity does not decline in the summer months due to staff vacation months.
– Reorganization of the quota modality. For the implementation of this planning, all public operating rooms will be used and arranged with their own professionals, called for such cases as Quota and thus allowing a greater surgical performance. For this, the portfolio of services of this modality will be expanded.
– Teleconsultation and the development of high-resolution consultations will be promoted as a complement to the face-to-face activity.
– The resolution capacity of Primary Care will be increased and the activity of consulting specialists will continue to be strengthened
Regarding the balance of results of the waiting list of the Canary Islands Health Service, they explained that it is about temporary results conditioned by the pandemic situation that we have been going through for a year due to Covid-19. In this sense, Blas Trujillo announced that his department has been working to implement an action plan that will have a financial statement of 200 million euros that will last two years to be stable and dynamic in obtaining results. .
According to him, the surgical waiting list has experienced a year-on-year reduction of 5.4 percent according to the data registered as of December 31, 2020. Therefore, the comparison with the same period of the previous year reflects a decrease of 1,390 fewer patients in the structural surgical waiting list of the SCS hospitals.
Blas Trujillo explained that the greatest reduction has been consolidated in the second half of 2020, a period in which the surgical waiting list dropped by 965 patients. The counselor pointed out that these results are the product of the assistance activity carried out during the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which an attempt has been made to maintain the assistance activity at the rate that the incidence of COVID cases has been allowing at all times.
In this sense, he affirmed that SCS professionals have made a great effort to attend and prioritize patients on the waiting list, respond to demand and attend to urgent cases and those who could not accept delay despite the pandemic. In this sense, and by way of example, he highlighted that activity was reduced during 2020, the year in which a total of 132,880 surgeries were performed, 16 percent less than in 2019 and more than 3,172,000 consultations, an item that was reduced only a 0.4 percent due to the increase of the telephone consultation that was of 264%.
Waiting lists and average delay
Trujillo pointed out that in the last semester a greater effort has been made on patients who waited more than 6 months for a surgical intervention and that, therefore, the waiting list of more than six months was reduced by 19 percent in this second semester, which means that 1,555 people saw their process resolved between July and December. He insisted that it was an indicator that was greatly affected during the first phase of the pandemic because it had increased by 2,000 people, thus balancing in the second part of the year.
The director of the SCS, Conrado Domínguez, explained that during 2020 the operating rooms of public hospitals have been at full capacity whenever the incidence of COVID-19 has allowed it. In this sense, he highlighted that during this period, priority has been given not only to oncological pathologies but also to all those that do not allow delay in order to solve the health problems of the population as quickly as possible given the pandemic situation in which there is still we are currently developing.
As he added, “one of the important indicators that shows the behavior of the approach to the surgical waiting list during this pandemic stage is that of the average delay, which if the annual calculation is compared reflects an increase of 13 percent despite the effort made in the second semester achieving a reduction of 8 percent (13.4 days on average less waiting). The average delay to be operated has fluctuated in the last year from 133 days in December 2019 to 163.4 in June 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic, to the current situation of 150.5 days.
In this sense, they added that the median, which is the statistical data that reflects that half of the patients pending surgery wait that number of days or less, is 78 days, compared to 75 in December 2020. This means that half of the patients take less than 78 days to be operated.
Consultation and testing waiting list
Regarding the waiting list for consultations, Blas Trujillo reported that there has been a year-on-year decrease in the waiting list for consultations of 26 percent, with 36,729 fewer patients, going from 141,386 patients waiting for a consultation in December 2019, to the 104,657 registered in December 2020. As he said, these figures must be evaluated in their context, since due to the pandemic the activity of consultations has been reduced and, therefore, also that of diagnostic tests.
Four specialties account for 71 percent of the waiting list for consultations: Ophthalmology, Traumatology, Dermatology, Rehabilitation and Otorhinolaryngology.
Regarding the waiting list for diagnostic tests, with currently 21,362 people waiting to have a test, there has been a reduction of 14 percent compared to December 2019.
