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At the press conference, Minister of Health Adam Niedzielski presented an action plan for the coming months in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. Niedzielski said, inter alia, that it is planned to implement primary care physicians in the patient testing system. The representatives of the Zielona Góra Agreement do not like the solution in this form.
Referral for tests after a physical exam is playing roulette
The Minister of Health, Adam Niedzielski, presented the path involving primary health care physicians in the testing system. Patient care begins with teleportation, and if the patient does not see any improvement or his condition worsens within 3-5 days of its provision, a direct examination should be performed at the facility, pos. After taking a medical history and physically examining the patient, your doctor will decide whether it is necessary to test for COVID-19. Depending on the result obtained, the patient will either return to the care of a physician (negative result) or be treated by an infectious disease specialist (positive result).
The decision of the Ministry of Health was commented by the president of the Zielona Góra Agreement, Jacek Krajewski:
– This solution means that physicians are included in the COVID-19 patient care system and play the most important role in it. And the most important role is in the savings that the state will get by abandoning widespread testing. Instead, we have the need for a physical examination by an item physician as a condition for referral for the test. In practice, this poses a huge threat to outpatient clinics that are not adapted to admit patients with infectious diseases, because most of them are not equipped with airlocks, filters and isolation rooms. There is no analogy to flu here, because GPs vaccinate against this disease before the season. Having to physically examine people suspected of being infected with the coronavirus is like roulette: after all, the doctor does not know if the patient has COVID or not. The situation caused by the Ministry of Health’s strategy threatens to create many new COVID-19 outbreaks, and these will become health care clinics.
Krajewski also emphasized that the strategy of the Ministry of Health to include medical professionals in the patient testing system was developed without the participation of health care employers’ organizations.
The concern of primary care physicians may be justified if we take into account that at the same conference, the Minister of Health said that testing people with symptoms that may suggest COVID-19 will be a priority. Therefore, it should be expected that symptomatic patients will be admitted to the clinic, which, combined with the fact that facilities are not prepared to receive patients suspected of COVID-19, may result in an increase in infections and isolation of doctors.
See: The Minister of Health announces changes in testing people suspected of COVID-19
Item facilities will be a “breeding ground” for COVID-19
The Zielona Góra Agreement appeals to the Minister of Health to jointly develop solutions related to the care of people infected with the coronavirus.
“The federation warns that if the health ministry shifts the burden of this care to basic health care, the system will collapse, health care clinics will become a breeding ground for COVID-19, and older workers (most at risk of infection) will leave their jobs” – we can read in the release from 1 September, that is before the official announcement of the new strategy.
During the year, GPs provide over 600. benefits per day, and in the autumn and winter season there are even more of them. Charging POZ with additional duties, not only medical, but above all administrative, organizational and bureaucratic, without properly organized infrastructure for this, raises the opposition of the Federation.
The federation highlights important issues that should be discussed and resolved before the strategy for including pos practitioners in the testing system is implemented. It goes, among others o adapting medical facilities to admit patients suspected of being infected with coronavirus: “How to prevent non-infectious patients of medical facilities from transmitting the infection in small outpatient clinics and practices without locks and filters with one entrance and waiting room and open registration, in the absence of compliance by patients with the principle of time separation ? » – asks the federation.
Doubts also concern communication between individual institutions, rules of conduct in the case of confirmation of infection in a patient who was physically staying in the facility, and waiting time for the test to be performed by contact persons and medical personnel.
Dr. Łukasz Jankowski, president of the District Medical Council in Warsaw in the Onet Rano program also pointed to the absurdity of the path proposed by the ministry. If the patient reports symptoms such as fever during the first teleportation, and after three to five days there are new ones, based on a telephone interview, the doctor may decide whether to test for COVID-19.
– Why can’t patients be referred to the test on the basis of teleportation alone? – Jankowski asks and emphasizes that if patients infected (or potentially infected) with coronavirus are to go to medical facilities, new procedures are needed.
What do you think about the dissolution of the Ministry of Health? Is teleportation enough to refer the patient for a COVID-19 test, or is a direct visit necessary? Squeaks on [email protected]
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