Francisco José Sáez Martínez, head of the Clinical Management Group of the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians (SEMG).
the pandemic for Covid-19 has meant a digitization acceleration that promises to be strengthened in the coming months and years. This transformation is affecting all sectors, including the health sector, in which telemedicine and remote attention have become the great engines of the change of model. However, despite the many benefits of digital health, this rapid transition has further marked the digital divide in elderly patient care.
Faced with this new scenario, Francisco Jose Saez Martinez, head of the Clinical Management Group of the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians (SEMG), maintains that face-to-face consultation should not be abandoned and highlights the steps to be followed to avoid patient exclusion, as well as his necessary attention to the futuristic vision of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
Broadly speaking, the elderly population does not have command of new technologies, however, according to Sáez, telemedicine and other mechanisms are systems that have been put “fully up and running”. In fact, it reveals that part of the funds that Spain has received from the European Union are being used for acquisition of technological novelties or to the activation of new applications.
However, the health sector, in which citations and digital certificates proliferate, is not the only one that is putting ‘obstacles’ on this group. So much so that, in recent weeks, the request of a 78-year-old Valencian resident, who demands “a more humane treatment in bank branches”, has reached all corners of Spain. For their part, “older chronic patients are going to continue to lose out and are going to suffer marginalization,” adds Sáez, highlighting the difficulty of access to new technologies for certain age groups in society.
Fundamental pillars in the digitization of healthcare
To continue advancing in this digitization of health, Saez considers it “essential” that do not give up the face-to-face consultation and that a series of basic documents between the patient and the professional, designed around the characteristics of the pathology that he suffers.
For SEMG, the three pillars that must be respected in this transition are that the patient always has the contact capacity, a disposition to be able to carry out the process and, finally, to leave the door open to face-to-face consultation. “Although teleconsultations are established, face-to-face consultations are necessary in chronic patients,” he defends, with the aim of not leaving behind the more than nine million people over 65 in Spain.
On this issue, Sáez acknowledges that part of the fear of family doctors lies in the total loss of presence in consultations. “There are options that telemedicine has that are very favorable and that can allow faster consultations and easier monitoring of already known pathologies, but It should not mean the disappearance of other types of assistance”, he maintains.
“We are seeing that, with the pandemic, many face-to-face appointments for chronic patients made in hospitals or Primary Care have disappeared and have been replaced by phone calls. This is not a good option”, he regrets, indicating that this lack of contact with the patient also affects the follow-up carried out by nursing professionals.
On the other hand, the health care provider warns of “great risk” what ‘collaboration’ with relatives entails when it comes to following up on an elderly person. In this regard, he points out that, on many occasions, the doctor does not speak with the patient, but with a relative of the same, so that the latter can not receiving the “necessary” information.
However, this new scenario not only poses a challenge for the elderly population, but also for professionals practicing Rural Medicine. Some health workers who work in areas known to be difficult to cover and who do not always have the possibility of accessing the digital world. “We are assuming that rural doctors have Wi-Fi and a connection, but that is not the case”, concludes the head of the SEMG Clinical Management Group, warning of the possible risks that ‘rushing’ may entail in this change towards a new health model.
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