If you are undergoing private treatment, you are well aware of the SMS notification system about appointments and possible cancellations. And if in the local clinic, you can only dream about an SMS with the information that tomorrow there will be a dentist or internist waiting for you. As about getting through to registration. This is about to change. From July 1, the National Health Fund will remind patients about visits and ask for information about a possible resignation. All via SMS. For now in Mazovia, and if the experiment turns out to be a success, also throughout Poland.
Only in the first quarter of 2016, 8,5 thousand people did not come to the scheduled visits in the Mazowieckie voivodship. patients. This gives 35 jobs annually. visits. It is similar all over Poland. Now comes the chance for a change. The National Health Fund decided to send patients text messages reminding them about the visit. The program will start first in Warsaw and its vicinity. The news will include, among others telephone number of the clinic where the patient is scheduled to visit. If, for any reason, he is unable to see the doctor, he will be asked to cancel it.
“It is worth remembering that one phone call is enough for the doctor to devote his time to another needy” – emphasizes the director of the Masovian National Health Fund Filip Nowak.
The solution tested in the Mazowieckie Voivodeship is based on data transferred to the Fund by medical institutions. The patient only needs to provide a mobile phone number when registering. The three-month pilot program will cover four specialties: endocrinology, cardiology, oncology and orthopedics.
The data from the National Health Fund show that only in the quarter of this year, Mazovian patients did not show up at specialist doctors’ visits to over 8,5 thousand. times. If this trend continues, 2016 jobs will be lost throughout 35. visits.
Most often, visits to oncology clinics are lost. In the first three months of 2016, 767 patients did not see a doctor, i.e. 10%. among those scheduled for an appointment. 3,4 thous. visits – for over 47 thousand arranged – did not take place in the case of traumatology clinics. It is over 7 percent. all meetings arranged in the first quarter of this year. Let us hope that the patients of the Mazowieckie voivodeship will prove to be so disciplined that the National Health Fund will decide that it is worth sending SMS messages to patients all over Poland.
The approach to seeing a doctor changes dramatically when it comes to serious heart conditions, in both children and adults. In the case of interventional cardiological procedures and operations on congenital heart defects in children, as well as in the case of heart valve implantation, all the appointments come to the appointment – according to the National Health Fund in Mazovia.