The province created the Network and Telehealth Coordination Center, that reformulates and extends the work that the 0800 Coronavirus has been carrying out for more than two years.
Now incorporates online interconsultations with specialists, second medical opinions and diagnoses and differential approaches for users of the public health system.
In the presentation conference of the new device, the Secretary of Health of the province, Jorge Prieto, explained the importance and the role that the Telehealth network will have.
“This is a transformation of 0800, very important news. Not only because it implies recognition of its workers, but because it will provide other services to all Santa Fe residents; expanding, improving and guaranteeing the right to access quality health , to users of the public system”, he initially highlighted.
“Governor Omar Perotti has always set his sights on the 0800, a tool that accompanied, contained and sustained much of the pandemic; fundamentally in the pre-vaccine time, when people needed to be accompanied, advised, instructed and even diagnosed through a phone call,” the official continued.
And he added: “Now, through resolution 2559 of September 15, 2022, 0800 Coronavirus is named as ‘Network and Telehealth Coordination Center’, something very gratifying for us. A recognition to all the people who work here, to the operators, to the doctors, to those who have coordinated the medical team. And I want to convey the enormous gratitude of the Minister of Health, Sonia Martorano, who might not be present to make the opening due to previously assumed commitments”.
“In a more connected Santa Fe, telehealth not only implies telemedicine. It implies telemanagement, teleinformatics; it implies teletraining, tools that will guarantee three fundamental pillars: universality, access and equity. It will not matter where we are born to access quality and comprehensive health”, summarized Jorge Prieto.
“With this new technological implementation it will also be possible to carry out training for the teams, therapeutic workshops, promote health, all actions aimed at citizens, making it possible to access specialized consultation as a second opinion consultation, strengthening local capacity and carrying out the active search for Santafesinos and Santafesinas with chronic non-communicable diseases in the territory”, expanded the Secretary of Health.
On the other hand, Prieto stressed that “today the 0800 is redefined and constituted as an interconsultant, as a new public health ‘effector’ made up of an interdisciplinary team that implements virtual tools, shortening distances. This facilitates accessibility and strengthens lines of care through telehealth, lines that will accompany the territorial teams of the province, especially those furthest away, the post-pandemic agenda”.
But, in this framework, Prieto was emphatic in pointing out that “the new device does not replace the emergency services because it is oriented to the scheduled consultation. It does prevent the uprooting towards the great effectors of complexity in large cities. And it provides a timely response that closest to the user’s home.
He also reported that there will be teleworkshops, strengthening of lines of action for prevention and care, healthy eating, physical education, skin care, smoking cessation, dental care and teleeducation, strengthening health teams at the first level of care.
Finally, the Secretary of Health stressed that “the Telehealth Network will be made up of clinicians, generalists and all specialties; psychologists, psychiatrists and Mental Health workers; diagnostic imaging specialists, among others, telephone operators and teleinformatics, who will be able to respond to queries from their colleagues in the territory, jointly addressing the health problems of the population”.
